Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, A STUDENT'S INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH GRAMMAR (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

NOTES ON THE EXERCISES TO CHAPTER 14

1–4: {Exx 1–4: model answers not called for. At some later stage we might provide texts to work on in Exx 3–4. I'm also inclined to think it was a mistake to ask `how many sentences' in Ex 4 — `how many pages' would probably have been better.}


5. Explain why the following coordinations are asymmetric.

Ex I fell off the ladder and broke my leg.
A This is asymmetric because of the implication that I broke my leg as a result of falling off the ladder: this implication would be lost if the order of the coordinates were reversed, as in I broke my leg and fell off the ladder.


6. Explain why the following lower-level coordinations are not equivalent to main-clause coordination.

Ex Who lives in College and has a car?
A This asks you to name someone who has both properties described in the coordinate VPs. Thus Jill would be a true answer only if Jill both lives in College and has a car. The main-clause coordination Who lives in College and who has a car? is asking two questions and it could be that the people who live in College and those who have a car do not overlap at all.


7. For each of the following examples, say which kind of non-basic coordination construction it exemplifies.

Ex She was then, is now, and always will be, devoted to the cause of peace.
A This is an instance of delayed right-constituent coordination: the rightmost constituent devoted to the cause of peace is understood as complement of was, is and be.


This page last updated Sun Jul 23 17:53:13 PDT 2006 by GKP. 1