Query: coordination in Categorial Grammar

[Roger Levy]

Ash Asudeh <asudeh at csli.stanford.edu> writes:

> Hello All,
>
> Yes, I know this isn't a Categorial Grammar list, but I think several
> people here are interested enough and know enough to answer the following
> question.
>
> How does CG (either Combinatory CG or Type-Logical Grammar) deal with
> non-binary coordination like "X, Y and Z"?
>
> From reading up on coordination in Steedman's work and Carpenter's book,
> it seems that the way it is done is to first combine Y and Z and then
> combine this with X (or start with X, this isn't important).
>
> Doesn't this assume that there has to be a coordinator in "X, Y and z"
> other than the overt "and" (e.g., either a null coordiantor, or something
> corresponding to the comma)?
>
> Thanks,
> Ash


I don't know how or whether the question's been addressed, but I'd be
curious to hear too.  I suppose you could take the comma as a
coordinator, but unless you want to admit "X, Y" as a well-formed
string in your language but not admit "X Y and Z", it might make more
sense to extend the polymorphism of coordinator "and" to allow an
arbitrary number of left-slashed conjunct categories--akin to allowing
regular expressions on the right hand side of CFG coordination rules.


Roger