7.388, Sum: Peripheral Coordinators

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-7-388. Wed Mar 13 1996. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines:  124
 
Subject: 7.388, Sum: Peripheral Coordinators
 
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Editor for this issue: dizdar at tam2000.tamu.edu (Ann Dizdar)
 
---------------------------------Directory-----------------------------------
1)
Date:  Mon, 11 Mar 1996 13:22:54 PST
From:  ezoerner at orion.oac.uci.edu (Ed Zoerner)
Subject:  Summary:  Peripheral Coordinators
 
---------------------------------Messages------------------------------------
1)
Date:  Mon, 11 Mar 1996 13:22:54 PST
From:  ezoerner at orion.oac.uci.edu (Ed Zoerner)
Subject:  Summary:  Peripheral Coordinators
 
 
Hello, All:
  Recently I posted a query on "peripheral" coordinators.  I asked
people to let me know of languages which employ either of the
following constructions:
 
			1.	And A and B and C
			2.	A and B and C and
 
  In my terms, (1) shows a left-peripheral coordinator, and (2) shows
a right-peripheral coordinator.  Before continuing, let me thank those
who responded to my query:
 
	Jose Camacho  Won-Hyuk  Lee Cassian  Branconnie Germen de Haan
	Peansiri Vongvipa  Martin Wynne  Peter Szigetvari  Susan Burt
	David Wharton  Jon Verhaar  Galina Briskina  Mark Mandel
	Stavros Macrakis  Jack Weidrick  Boris Aleksandrov  Peter Daniels
	Anton Sherwood  Rolf Tatje  Vern Linblad  Damir Cavar
	Robbie Petterson
 
  I failed to mention in my original query that I was especially
interested in languages whose peripheral coordinators match the
'normal' coordinator in phonetic content.  Here, in no particular
order, are some languages which have the (1) pattern:
 
	Dutch:  En Jan en Marie		(also West Frisian
	Croatian:  i Ivan i Mari
	French:  et Robin et Kim
	Italian:  e Gianni e Maria
	Latin:	et Marcus et Brutus
	Russian:  i Robin i Kim
	Ancient Greek:  kai Sokrates kai Platon
 
  And here are a few with the (2) pattern:
 
 	Japanese:  Robin-to Kim-to
	Korean:  Robin-and Kim-and
	Rumu (Papuan, SOV):  A ti B ti
 
  The peripheral coordinator strategy appears more wide-spread than I
anticipated.  Instead of asking why a language has a peripheral
coordinator, it might be a more useful question to ask why English
lacks "and A and B!"
  I care most about peripheral coordinators with identical phonetic
content because they relate most directly to a theory of
coordinator-distribution I've been working on.  I've proposed (in my
thesis, 1996) that we need to think of multi-termed coordination as a
type of shelled structure, somewhat like Larson's VP-shell analysis.
So I think that an English 3-termed NP- conjunction has the underlying
structure of:
 
		3.	[&P Robin [&' e [&P Kim [&' and Terry]]]]
 
where the e stands for an empty head position.  By LF, the 'and' must
raise; assuming a copy theory of movement, we get:
 
		4.	[&p Robin [&' and [&p Kim [&' AND Terry]]]]
 
where AND shows the copy of the moved 'and'.  For me, forms like
"Robin and Kim and Terry" arise simply when the & raises at PF instead
of LF (perhaps discourse conditions override Procrastinate).
  The main reason that I wanted to know about peripheral &s is that
they pose a problem of sorts.  I'd like to say that they too reflect a
manifestation of a single base-generated lexical coordinator, so that
Ducth "En Robin en Kim en Terry" would have the structure:
 
		5.	[&P  en [&P Robin [&' EN [&P Kim [&' EN Terry]]]]]
 
  But motivating the top layer of &P-structure seems difficult.  I
welcome any suggestions!
  It seems as though the presence of the peripheral coordinator forces
a distributed reading in virtually every language.  Forms such as (6)
and (7) fail under the intended reading where Robin and Kim meet each
other:
 
		6.	And Robin and Kim met
		7.	Robin and Kim and met
 
  I had stated that Japanese and perhaps Korean allowed (7); I was
informed that this is not so.  Robbie Petterson states that Rumu does
permit the collective reading; I have no idea why.
  Several people asked why I excluded terms like English "both" in my
query.  I think that it's independently base-generated (unlike
external Dutch 'en', for instance), in part because unlike true
coordinators it can float: "Both Robin and Kim," "Robin and Kim both."
I've gone on too long already, though, so I won't continue here.
Thanks again to those who responded.  Feel free to contact me if you
have any further information or if you just want to talk about the
topic with me.
						Ed Zoerner
						UC Irvine
						ezoerner at orion.oac.uci.edu
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