Coordination: Consequences of a Lexical-Functional Account

This paper presents an LFG-based analysis ofcoordination in terms of (non-headed) sets off-structures and the distribution of grammaticalfunctional information across sets. This approachprovides a descriptively adequate account of keyproperties of coordination, including the distributionof grammatical functions across all conjuncts, theability to coordinate unlike cattegories under certainsyntactic conditions, and the non-distribution of lexicalproperties such as tense and number.Coordination is subject to the condition thatitems can be conjoined if and only if theysatisfy the condition of functional equivalence. Thiscondition does not have to be stipulated; it followsas an axiom from the general principles of functionalapplication to sets.Since coordination is not a headed construction, thereis no percolation path for features from individual categorieswithin a coordinate structure to the node dominating thecoordination. Therefore lexical properties will not be sharedacross the coordination as a whole. The lack of distributivityallows individual conjuncts to differ in terms of lexicalproperties. In particular, it is expected, rather than exceptional,that coordinated NPs may differ in number, person, case and gender.The proposed account also predicts a high level of idiosyncrasyand variability with respect to `agreement' between the subjectNP and the verb and/or predicate complement.

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