2005 SomeNotesOnCoordinationInHeadFinalLangs

• (Zwart, 2005) ⇒ Jan-Wouter Zwart. (2005). “Some Notes on Coordination in Head-Final Languages.” In: Linguistics in the Netherlands (LIN 2005).

Subject Headings: Coordinating Conjunction.

Cited By

~7 http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=506997906442431224

Quotes

• In a structuralist tradition going back to at least De Groot (1949:112), and recently revived by Kayne (1994:12), coordinated constituents are taken to be headed by the conjunction, which takes the second coordinand as its complement. This makes it possible to classify conjunctions as initial (A [& B]) or final (A [B &]), and to consider the question whether the use of initial/final conjunctions correlates with headedness (the typological distinction between head-initial and head-final languages). This question is addressed by Stassen (2003: 775), who finds that final conjunctions occur in verb-final languages only. This statement, however, glosses over the fact that final conjunction is rare even in head-final languages.
• This article presents a survey of the phenomena of noun phrase coordination in head-final languages, from which it will emerge that head-final languages display a remarkable preference for initial conjunctions. If De Groot and Kayne are right about the structure of the coordination constituent, one is forced to conclude that almost all head-final languages show some head-initial structure.
• The survey presented here is based on a sample of 162 languages constructed for studying morphosyntactic variation (see the Appendix). Head-final languages are defined as those in which the verb (V) and adposition (P)Cor one of the two in case the position of the other is unclearCfollow their complements in the unmarked surface word order. Noun phrase coordination is defined as in (1):
  • 1. Noun phrase coordination: A constituent [math]\displaystyle{ x }[/math] is a noun phrase coordination iff [math]\displaystyle{ x }[/math] contains two or more noun phrases realizing a single argument or grammatical relation.
• This definition includes cases like (2a) and (2c), but excludes cases like (2b) and (2d):
  • 2a. [John and Mary] went to the store
  • 2b. [John, Mary], they went to the store
  • 2c. [John with Mary] went to the store
  • 2d. [John] went to the store [with Mary]
• We will refer to the type of (2b) as involving a summary strategy: multiple entities are listed and then followed by an element which summarizes or refers to the list as a single entity. The types in (2c,d) employ the familiar comitative strategy (Stassen 2000, 2003); (2c) is potentially a case of coordination, but (2d) is not.1
• Elements like and and with in (2a,c) will be called conjunctions, and elements like they in (2b) and with in (2d) will be called summary elements and comitative elements, respectively. Based on the number of conjunctions [math]\displaystyle{ N }[/math] (where [math]\displaystyle{ M }[/math] = the number of coordinands) we distinguish among asyndetic (N = 0), monosyndetic (N = 1 or [math]\displaystyle{ M }[/math] - 1) and polysyndetic (N = M) coordination types. We concentrate on the monosyndetic type here, and based on the position of the conjunction, we will distinguish initial (3a) and final (3b) conjunctions:2
  • 3a. A & B
  • 3b. A B &

6. Conclusion

• Head-final languages overwhelmingly employ initial conjunctions. The few cases of final conjunctions found in the sample are suspect, in that they represent strategies (the summary strategy and the comitative strategy) which Mithun (1988) identifies as alternatives to coordination. The summary strategy is also found in head-initial languages and in combination with initial conjunctions. There appears to be a universal developmental path from final pseudo-conjunctions (summary or comitative elements) to genuine initial conjunctions. Moreover, the sample does not appear to contain a single language that uses a pure conjunction (i.e. not a comitative or summary element) in monosyndetic noun phrase coordinations of the type (3b). The findings suggest that (3a) is the universal type of monosyndetic noun phrase coordination

References

• A. W. de Groot. (1949). “Structurele syntaxis. The Hague: Servire.
• R. S. Kayne. (1994). “The Antisymmetry of Syntax.” Cambridge: MIT Press.
• L. Stassen. (2003). “Some Universal Characteristics of Noun Phrase Conjunction.” In: F. Plank (ed.), Noun phrase structure in the languagues of Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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	Author	volume	Date Value	title	type	journal	titleUrl	doi	note	year
2005 SomeNotesOnCoordinationInHeadFinalLangs	Jan-Wouter Zwart			Some Notes on Coordination in Head-Final Languages		Linguistics in the Netherlands	http://www.let.rug.nl/~zwart/docs/lin2005.pdf			2005