LINGUIST List 2.10

Friday, 17 Jan 1991

Disc: CSC

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1. , Coordinate Structure Constraint
2. , Coordinate Structure Constraint

Date: Sun, 13 Jan 91 19:22 EST
From: John Bro <BOUGIEPINE.CIRCA.UFL.EDU>
Subject: CSC - Lakoff's account (1986)


Micheal Covington <mcovingtuga> writes:
>Is the Coordinate Structure Constraint a good example of a grammatical
>principle that appears to be inborn, or at least not acquired in the
>usual way?

 Lakoff's argument that it is not a "constraint" in the usual
 UG sense, but more cognitve/pragmatic is worth considering. 
 (I think Paul Deane has an article in a recent
 _Cognitive Linguistics_ that may cover the main points)

 Lakoff, George. (1986) Frame semantic control of the coordinate 
 structure constraint. Anne M. Farley et al., eds.,
 CLS 22, Part2: Papers from the Parasession on Pragmatics
 and Grammatical Theory, pp. 152-167. Chicago: CLS

>I would like to use the CSC as an example for pedagogical purposes.
>The grammaticality judgements are *much* clearer than for the C-Command
>example given in Roeper's article in the Cambridge Survey of Linguistics.

 Lakoff offers the following (among others...) for consideration (in
 response to Ross, and Goldsmith 1985):

 a. What did he go to the store, buy, load in his car, drive home and 
 unload?
 b. How many courses can you take for credit, still remain sane, and
 get all A's in?
 c. Sam is not the sort of guy you can just sit there, listen to, 
 and not want to punch in the nose.
 d. This is the kind of brandy that you can sip after dinner, watch
 TV for a while, sip some more of, work a bit, finish off, go to 
 bed, and still feel fine in the morning. 
 e. I went to the store, bought, came home, wrapped up, and put 
 under the Christmas tree one of the nicest little laser death-ray
 kits I've ever seen. 

 In a-e, some conjuncts do not participate in extraction!

 Lakoff says: "just about any kind of extraction pattern is possible
 with VP conjunctions of this kind. In short, there is no general
 coordinate structure constraint." (p153).

 He provides the following to show that a "parasitic gap reanalysis"
 won't work, either: 
 f. How many courses can you take for credit, still remain sane, 
 and not get bad grades in?
 j. *How many course can you take for credit while still remaining sane
 without getting bad grades in?

 Also consider this opposition:
 h. What kind of cancer can you eat herbs and not get?
 i. What kind of herbs can you eat and not get cancer?

 Lakoff classifies these examples into 3 different kinds of 
 frames or scenarios which he dubs A,B, or C-type. A-types "fit normal
 conventionalized expectations", B-types involve "a course of events 
 that is counter to conventionalized expectations" and C-type involve 
 a cause-result sequence. 
 He argues that "the option of keeping the CSC
	and adding a semantic or pragmatic filter is not available. 
 The reason, of course, is that the CSC rules out these cases as 
 ungrammatical and no semantic or pragmatic filter can make an 
 ungrammatical sentence into a grammatical one."

 Lakoff seems to have something here. Doesn't he?

===========================================================================

 John Bro BOUGIEUFPINE (Bitnet)
 Prog. in Ling. BOUGIEPINE.CIRCA.UFL.EDU (Internet)
 Univ. of Florida

Date: Mon, 14 Jan 91 09:23:54 CST
From: GA3662%SIUCVMB.BITNETCUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Coordinate Structure Constraint

Not so much on innateness as on the complexity and squishiness
of the CSC--George Lakoff gave a paper a few years ago (I think
at an LSA, but I can't find the appropriate book of abstracts)
showing that the CSC can be violated under the appropriate
conditions. His examples were of the following type:

How many bottles of vodka can you drink t and still be able to drive
 a car?

His paper showed, convincingly I think, that there are pragmatic
and semantic conditions on the CSC, and he may even have suggested
some pragmatic and/or semantic reason for the constraint in the
first place.
 Geoff Nathan <ga3662siucvmb.bitnet>