Coordination

The term “coordination” refers to a linguistic operation that combines two or more constituents, typically of the same semantic and syntactic type, into a larger unit of that semantic and syntactic type, by means of one or more linking elements. In English, linking elements are the conjunction and, the disjunction or and the adversative linker but. The behavior of coordination has been known for a long time to be different from that of any other linguistic operation, and can only be explained in terms of the combination of syntactic and semantic processes. The article, part of the International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning (in 3 volumes), presents the key features of this phenomenon, from old syntactic puzzles (the parallelism requirement, the Coordinate Structure Constraint, the ellipsis patterns, the key features of the distinction between coordination and subordination), to semantic facts such as the difference between Boolean and non-Boolean conjunction, the cumulativity / distributivity pattern, the possibility of 'nested' pluralities and the scopal behavior of "and" and "or". The article reviews the main theories that have been put forth to explain these facts, with an eye on their interrelations and on the way syntax and semantics can sometimes compete for a solution.