Hans Broekhuis (Meertens Institute)

Asymmetrical coordination

This talk will argue that the special interpretations of asymmetrical coordinate structures (that is, coordinate structure that do not allow inversion of their coordinands without repercussion on their meaning), such as the conditional reading of Come here or I’ll shoot, result from an intricate interplay of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, but that there is no need to introduce special grammatical mechanisms or stipulations. I will further focus on one specific type of asymmetrical disjunctive coordination especially, which has been argued to necessitate the introduction of a third type of syntactic relation besides the traditionally distinguished cases of coordination and subordination, and which has been called balanced ordination (Dutch: balansschikking). I will argue that the introduction of this third type of relation is not only unnecessary, thus unwanted, but also that the standard arguments that have been put forward in favor of it are seriously flawed.