Coach Paterno and the syntactic blind alley

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Nov 10, 2011, at 7:03 AM, Larry Horn wrote:
>
> Is there a standard term for these blind-alley/no-exit situations?  Have these been covered on Language Log?  (I don't know what to search under, but surely Arnold or Ben will remember if they've been discussed.)

Chuck Fillmore treated them as "(syntactic) gaps" -- the result of a conflict between different principles.

i've discussed one case -- verb agreement with disjunctive subjects -- in some detail, originally here on ADS-L, then on Language Log:

AZ, 4/4/09: Agreement with disjunctive subjects:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1293

with further complexities discussed on my blog:

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/more-variation-than-expected/

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/he-or-she-are/

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/sg-or-sg-pl/

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