NP coordination

[Nina Dobrushina or Michael Daniel]

Edith, here are three more point on coordination

1. I can provide you the references to the other works, if needed

2. I wonder whether the situation of Kuot where there are two different types of conjunction - one used for two NPs of the same animacy degree and the other when they are different - is extraordinary. I guess, in many languages coordination of two NPs with different animacy categorization would seem unnatural in many contexts. A conjoined NP like "my father and a phone booth" sounds strange, at least in Russian. I guess that strongly depends on the context - whether the two objects are considered to be equally ranked participants of one situation. You probably better say "I saw my dad and his car at the opposite side of the street" rather than "I saw my dad and a phone booth at the opposite side of the street". In Russian, I would avoid both, saying somehting like "I saw my dad by his car at the opposite side of the street" - may be it is the same for English? Anyway, there are obvious constraints on conjoining NPs differently positioned at the animacy hierarchy.

3. What Martin says about inclusive reference coordination constructions is true, but this is not strictly speaking what your question was about. In most languages, these constructions only occur with a pronominal head and are not available for NP + NP constructions at all.


Misha Daniel