Abstract
This paper argues that in Russian a (singular) NP can combine with a comitative PP to form a complex plural NP, and that this NP denotes a group in the sense of Landman (1989). A single-headed GPSG analysis of the construction is proposed and argued for, and the implications of the analysis for number agreement are discussed. The semantic properties of the construction (and its counterpart in Polish) are subsequently detailed and are compared with those of ‘ordinary’ NP coordination; the preliminary conclusion is that the construction differs both in denotation and in conventional meaning from NP coordination.
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This work has benefitted considerably from comments by many individuals, particularly Bill Ladusaw, Judith Aissen, Geoff Pullum, Sandy Chung, Peter Lasersohn, Chris Barker, Barbara Parlee, Maria Bittner, David Gil, Katarzyna Dziwirek, David Pesetsky and two anonymous reviewers. I am also grateful to Yelena Kraz, Boris Katok, Sheila Blust, Maria Bittner, Katarzyna Dziwirek, and Stefan Dyla for assistance with the data, and to audiences at the 1988 LSA Annual Meeting and the 1989 LSA Linguistic Institute, where earlier versions of this work were presented. Of course, I assume responsibility for all shortcomings in what follows. This research was supported by an NSF Graduate Fellowship, NSF grant BNS-8519708, and the Syntax Research Center at UCSC.
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Mcnally, L. Comitative coordination: A case study in group formation. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 11, 347–379 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992917
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992917