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1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

Niina Ning Zhang
Affiliation:
National Chung-Cheng University, Taiwan
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Summary

All languages have coordinate constructions. Although generative grammar, including recent work within the Minimalist framework, has made much progress in reducing various types of construction-specific syntax to the minimum, it has not answered the following four fundamental questions:

  1. A. Does the derivation of coordinate constructions create any special syntactic configuration, other than the general binary complementation and adjunction configuration?

  2. B. Does the derivation of coordinate constructions resort to any special syntactic category, other than NP, VP, and so on?

  3. C. Is the derivation of coordinate constructions subject to any special constraint on syntactic operations, other than general conditions such as the Minimal Link Condition?

  4. D. Does the derivation of coordinate constructions require any special type of syntactic operations, other than Merge and the step-by-step, one-tail-one-head chains of Move?

In this monograph, my answer to all of these four questions is negative. I argue against any special syntax of coordination. Consequently, no special syntax is the real syntactic law of coordination, just as the Minimalist program would lead us to expect.

However, the standard answer to Question A is affirmative. Coordination has hitherto enjoyed the exclusive privilege of the flat multiple branching structure, as shown in (1.1a), which can be found in nearly all linguistics textbooks.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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  • Introduction
  • Niina Ning Zhang, National Chung-Cheng University, Taiwan
  • Book: Coordination in Syntax
  • Online publication: 04 August 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511770746.001
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  • Introduction
  • Niina Ning Zhang, National Chung-Cheng University, Taiwan
  • Book: Coordination in Syntax
  • Online publication: 04 August 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511770746.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Niina Ning Zhang, National Chung-Cheng University, Taiwan
  • Book: Coordination in Syntax
  • Online publication: 04 August 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511770746.001
Available formats
×