Coreference in Non-constituent coordination

[John Beavers]

Hello, Dick and all,

On Sat, 18 May 2002, Dick Hudson wrote:

> At the risk of outstaying my welcome, how about these?
> (a)	After the examiners' meeting we'll know who passed and failed.

Sorry, I only get the coreference reading here, paradoxical though it is.

> (b)	Who got the two departmental prizes? The students who came first in
> syntax and wrote the longest essay for semantics.

Ditto...

> (c)	It was an Englishman who first climbed Everest and ran the first
> four-minute mile. (or: ... Englishmen)

For "an Englishman" I only get the coreference reading (and for some
reason the most salient reading is "One Englishman first climbed Everest
and then once he got to the top proceeded to run the first four minute
mile").  For "Englishmen" I can certainly get that it was different people
(all English) but isn't that an expected property of bare plurals?

> (d)	Most of the work was done by the girls, but a boy stood at the door and
> served behind the bar. (meaning the people who stood at the door or served
> behind the bar were boys).

Only one boy who both served at the bar and stood at the door.

It seems that the only non-coreferential sentences so far have been the
ones that employed some explicit marker of distributivity like
"respectively" or "either ... or".

My two cents worth,
John

> Dick
>
> At 19:10 17/05/2002 -0700, you wrote:
> >
> >Regarding (1)-(3), Chris Manning wrote:
> >
> >>> (1) People come to London in the summer and avoid it in the winter.
> >>> (2) Only one student got a distinction and failed - all the rest just
> passed.
> >>> (3) One boy kissed Mary and hugged Jane - all the other girls got kisses
> >>>     and hugs from several boys.
> >
> >> I would agree that it seems hard out of context to get the desired
> >> reading of (2).  But, at any rate, there's an extensive literature
> >> arguing this back and forth.  I think most people accept that this
> >> reading is felicitous for some sentences with this structure.  See for
> >> instance Section 7.6 of Carpenter's Type Logical Semantics.
> >
> >I have to point out that Carpenter's discussion in this section offers
> >one new example (due to Dale Gerdemann):
> >
> >(42a) He's gonna find out who's naughty and nice.
> >
> >Otherwise, the discussion in this section simply refers to that of Hermann
> >Hendriks' (1993), who claimed that such examples are ambiguous, a claim that
> >has been challenged by many native speakers, most famously perhaps, by
> >Partee's earlier observation that exx. like (4) are unambigous:
> >
> >(4) Few books are explicit and easy to read.
> >
> >I have to agree with Ash and Paul in rejecting the distributed quantifier
> >readings for (1)-(3). Though (42a) does occur in a Christmas carol (Santa
> >Claus is Coming to Town), it could well be poetic license of some kind,
> >motivated by the meter, for example (`...who's naughty and who's nice' really
> >changes the rhythmic feel of the song). Have people found other naturally
> >occurring examples of distributed quantifiers in subject position?
> >
> >-Ivan
> >
> >-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Ivan A. Sag
> >Professor of Linguistics
> >Director of Graduate Studies: Symbolic Systems Program
> >Senior Researcher: Center for the Study of Language and Information
> >Stanford University - Stanford, CA  94305  USA
> >-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
> >
>
> Richard (= Dick) Hudson
>
> Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London,
> Gower Street, London WC1E  6BT.
> +44(0)20 7679 3152; fax +44(0)20 7383 4108;
> http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm
>