Fwd: coordination

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: ana carrera <gappingucl at yahoo.co.uk>
> Date: September 22, 2005 2:41:28 PM PDT
> To: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
> Subject: Re: coordination
>
> Dear all,
> A few days ago prof. Zwicky sent a query on my behalf. From the  
> responses which I have received it is possible that the query was  
> ambiguous and therefore I would like to repost my query and I hope  
> I have expressed myself more clearly this time.
>
> I am dealing with forward gapping in SOV, VSO and SOV languages as  
> part of my dissertation. By forward gapping I understand the  
> deletion of the verb in the second conjunct:
>
> (1)  I study gapping and you  VP-ellipsis.
>
> My research so far predicts that forward gapping is only possible  
> in those languages which use one and the same coordinator for all  
> the categories they conjoin, independently of whether they have the  
> unmarked order SVO, SOV or VSO. For instance, in English (SVO) the  
> coordinator "and" is used to conjoin NPs, Clauses, PPs, etc and  
> forward gapping is possible. In Basque (SOV) the coordinator is  
> "eta" both for NPs and clauses and therefore forward gapping is  
> also possible.
>
> On the contrary, Yoruba (SVO) has a different coordinator for NPs  
> (àti) and for clauses (sì) and therefore forward gapping is  
> disallowed. The same is true in Japanese or Korean (SOV) which also  
> show different coordinators for NPs and clauses and thus disallow  
> forward gapping.
>
> My hypothesis is that coordinators which select for what they  
> conjoin block the possibility of forward gapping.
>
> I would be very grateful if you could provide me with more data  
> which confirm or disconfirm my results so far.