Constraints on coordination

1. 'The fundamental aim in the linguistic analysis of a language L', according to Chomsky (1957:13), 'is to separate the GRAMMATICAL sequences which are the sentences of L from the UNGRAMMATICAL sequences which are not sentences of L, and to study the structure of the grammatical sequences.' While this aim is obviously somewhat utopian, the research results of recent years have shown that even a limited achievement of it, in connection with some small subset of the sentences of a language, may be of considerable interest both in itself and in its consequences for general linguistic theory. In the present paper, I shall try to provide further evidence to this effect through an investigation of certain determinants of grammaticalness for constructions involving coordinating conjunctions, primarily constructions involving Eng. and.