Non-constituent coordination

[Berthold Crysmann]

Dear all,

thanks for your judgements and comments.

As many mails have been sent to me personally, here's a brief
preliminary summary.

So far, I have got 18 replies (plus 3 I got here in SB), and

Berthold Crysmann wrote:

>
> John gave Mary a book and a record to Peter.
>
is judged ungrammatical 9 (11) and acceptable by 9 (10).

It happened twice that the sentence was misread as "John gave Mary a
book and Peter a record. " and therefore was judged ok, initially. So I
would be very happy, if those amongst you who said ok would briefly
confirm their judgement of the non-parallel case as well.

Bob Levine remarks  that he finds

(1) John gave Mary a book, and to Peter, a record.

much better than my original sentence (which he starred).


Neil Whitman provides this example:

(2)   So Neal, did you give the dog that toy like
       you were planning to do?
Me:  No, actually I changed my mind.  I gave
       the dog a bone, and the toy to the cat.


One of my informants here (also in the out camp) finds the following
sentence acceptable:

(3) Even *John* gave Mary a book and a record to Peter.


Could you send me, once more your judgements/comments re these 3 examples?


Thanks a lot for your help.

Best,

Berthold




--
Berthold Crysmann <crysmann at dfki.de>
Deutsches Forschungszentrum Kuenstliche Intelligenz (DFKI) GmbH
Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3
D-66123 Saarbruecken