LINGUIST List 7.401

Sun Mar 17 1996

Disc: Peripheral Coordinators

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>

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1. "SUKRIYE RUHI", Re: 7.388, Sum: Peripheral Coordinators

Message 1: Re: 7.388, Sum: Peripheral Coordinators

 1.	And A and B and C
 2.	A and B and C and

 In my terms, (1) shows a left-peripheral coordinator, and (2) shows
a right-peripheral coordinator. Before continuing, let me thank those
who responded to my query:

 Jose Camacho Won-Hyuk Lee Cassian Branconnie Germen de Haan
 Peansiri Vongvipa Martin Wynne Peter Szigetvari Susan Burt
 David Wharton Jon Verhaar Galina Briskina Mark Mandel
 Stavros Macrakis Jack Weidrick Boris Aleksandrov Peter Daniels
 Anton Sherwood Rolf Tatje Vern Linblad Damir Cavar
 Robbie Petterson

 I failed to mention in my original query that I was especially
interested in languages whose peripheral coordinators match the
'normal' coordinator in phonetic content. Here, in no particular
order, are some languages which have the (1) pattern:

 Dutch: En Jan en Marie		(also West Frisian
 Croatian: i Ivan i Mari
 French: et Robin et Kim
 Italian: e Gianni e Maria
 Latin:	et Marcus et Brutus
 Russian: i Robin i Kim
 Ancient Greek: kai Sokrates kai Platon

 And here are a few with the (2) pattern:

 Japanese: Robin-to Kim-to
 Korean: Robin-and Kim-and
 Rumu (Papuan, SOV): A ti B ti

 The peripheral coordinator strategy appears more wide-spread than I
anticipated. Instead of asking why a language has a peripheral
coordinator, it might be a more useful question to ask why English
lacks "and A and B!"
 I care most about peripheral coordinators with identical phonetic
content because they relate most directly to a theory of
coordinator-distribution I've been working on. I've proposed (in my
thesis, 1996) that we need to think of multi-termed coordination as a
type of shelled structure, somewhat like Larson's VP-shell analysis.
So I think that an English 3-termed NP- conjunction has the underlying
structure of:

 3.	[&P Robin [&' e [&P Kim [&' and Terry]]]]

where the e stands for an empty head position. By LF, the 'and' must
raise; assuming a copy theory of movement, we get:

 4.	[&p Robin [&' and [&p Kim [&' AND Terry]]]]

where AND shows the copy of the moved 'and'. For me, forms like
"Robin and Kim and Terry" arise simply when the & raises at PF instead
of LF (perhaps discourse conditions override Procrastinate).
 The main reason that I wanted to know about peripheral &s is that
they pose a problem of sorts. I'd like to say that they too reflect a
manifestation of a single base-generated lexical coordinator, so that
Ducth "En Robin en Kim en Terry" would have the structure:

 5.	[&P en [&P Robin [&' EN [&P Kim [&' EN Terry]]]]]

 But motivating the top layer of &P-structure seems difficult. I
welcome any suggestions!
 It seems as though the presence of the peripheral coordinator forces
a distributed reading in virtually every language. Forms such as (6)
and (7) fail under the intended reading where Robin and Kim meet each
other:

 6.	And Robin and Kim met
 7.	Robin and Kim and met

 I had stated that Japanese and perhaps Korean allowed (7); I was
informed that this is not so. Robbie Petterson states that Rumu does
permit the collective reading; I have no idea why.
 Several people asked why I excluded terms like English "both" in my
query. I think that it's independently base-generated (unlike
external Dutch 'en', for instance), in part because unlike true
coordinators it can float: "Both Robin and Kim," "Robin and Kim both."
I've gone on too long already, though, so I won't continue here.
Thanks again to those who responded. Feel free to contact me if you
have any further information or if you just want to talk about the
topic with me.
 Dear Ed,
Turkish has the forms
1. And Robin and Kim and Anne (this once appeared as the title of a 
film, naturally with Turkish names)

2. And Robin and Kim and Anne met. (this, to my knowledge has the
meaning of Robin, Kim and Anne meeting each other, but also includes
the sense of distribution. I am not quite sure about the sense with
which you are using distribution. So I'll try to clarify, what I mean
by distribution. In a paper that I wrote on and in Turkish (ve in
Turkish, which is a loan word from Arabic) in 1992, I analysed the
coordinator as a discourse and NP or VP conjunction that processes the
conjoined elements with a srategy that I can translate as 'process
TOGETHER but APART'. That is, it is something that prevents
'propositional inheritance. You might want to discuss this with my
colleague, Gurkan Dogan (Hacettepe University, Ankara).

3. Turkish also has the native conjunction ile, which functions as NP
coordinator only, but cannt replace and as in (1) above. As a form it
is both a free morpheme and a bound morpheme. It emerges in both forms
in written and in spoken Turkish. It does not allow distributive
meaning.Some examples follow:

(4) Robin ile (and) Kim met. 
(5) Robin'le (and) Kim met. (the i is dropped phonemically)
(6)*Robin ile Kim ile Anne met. 
(7)*Robin'le Kim ile Anne met.
(8)? ?Robin ile Kim ve Anne met.
(9)??Robin ve Kim ve Anne met.
(10) Robin ve Kim ve Anne met.

I will be very pleased to go on talking about the ands in languages.
Particularly. I would like to know whether there are other languages
like Turkish, which have two surface forms for &. Thank you for
posting up your summary.

 G/urkan Dogan's e-mail is:
gurkaneti.cc.hun.edu.tr

Assoc. Prof. Dr. S/ukriye Ruhi
Dept. of Foreign Language Education
Middle East Technical University
Inoen/u Blvd.
06531 Ankara, Turkey
Fax:99-312-210 12 56
e-mail: sruhitutor.fedu.metu.edu.tr