[Ads-l] Coordinate Noun Phrase Constraint violated on Facebook

[Herb Stahlke]

While this looks formally like a coordinate structure and so should obey
the CSC, "stand by and" is more like "try and," "take and" or "up and"
which have more of a modal function

You have to take and put this part in first.
I think I'll try and leave early today.
He up and walked out on me.
etc.

Herb


On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 1:52 PM Geoffrey Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu>
wrote:

> Please ignore the political message (or not, as you choose) but there’s a
> meme floating around on Facebook that straightforwardly violates Ross’s
> Coordinate Noun Phrase Constraint (or any of its modern versions).
> Apologies if you’re not into such syntactic minutiae:
>
> How much treason do you need to stand by and watch Trump commit?
>
> How much treason{i} do you need to [
>      ]
>
>                                      [stand by] and [watch Trump commit
> X{i} ]
>
> (FWIW George Lakoff found a few of these several years ago, but I haven’t
> seen one live in a while)
>
> Geoff
>
> Geoffrey S. Nathan
> WSU Information Privacy Officer (Retired)
> Emeritus Professor, Linguistics Program
> http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
> geoffnathan at wayne.edu
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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