Derived Coordination: A Minimalist Perspective on Clause Chains, Converbs and Asymmetric Coordination

Discusses a number of phenomena claimed to be in between coordination and subordination all of which have been notoriously problematic for various syntactic theories in the past years, this book provides a unified syntactic analysis for all of these phenomena. It shows how the mixed properties can be derived in a Minimalist Framework.

This monograph explores the different types of clausal relations in the world’s languages. In the recent literature, there have been claims that the strict dichotomy of subordination and coordination cannot be maintained since some constructions seem to be in between these two categories. This study investigates these constructions in detail.

The first part is concerned with clause chaining constructions, while the second is concerned with different cases of asymmetric coordination in English. In both parts, it is shown that the different tests to distinguish clausal relations indeed yield different results for the specific constructions. This poses a severe challenge for the established theories of clausal relations. However, as it is argued, recent analyses of coordination provide for the possibility to map a subordinate structure onto a coordinate one by means of regular transformational rules. It is shown that a single movement step derives all the peculiar properties of the phenomena in question.

This book thus provides the first comprehensive solution for a long-standing problem in theoretical syntax.

• | Author: Philipp Weisser
• | Publisher: De Gruyter
• | Publication Date: Aug 28, 2015
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9783110443066
• | ISBN-10: 3110443066