Constraints on Coordination in English

Abstract

This paper examines various types of coordination structures in English. Unlike regular coordinate structures, some data show that the coordinately conjoined elements are syntactically different categories, thus violating Chomsky's same type condition and Williams's Law of the Coordination of Likes. I show that the coordination of the unlike categories dubbed as CUCs in the literature can best be accounted for by a semantically oriented condition such that constituents can be coordinately conjoined if they are semantically connected with each other.