Recommendations

Coordination

As has already been shown in some of the preceding examples, the issue of coordination necessarily arises: how is coordination to be represented in terms of constituency? Different approaches have been taken, and in the example analyses given in this document, we have chosen to take a traditional approach, showing the coordinated constituents at the same level, with the conjunction between them (see also 47 and 48):

(51)  [NP [NP John NP] and [NP Mary NP] NP]

(52)  She went [PP [PP to the library PP] or [PP to the cafeteria PP] PP]

(53)  He works [ADVP [ADVP very slowly ADVP] but [ADVP very meticulously ADVP] ADVP]

However, in practice, in an automated parsing system, this is not an easy differentiation to make, and in some existing schemes, a slightly less satisfactory solution has been found, viz. analysing coordination in a similar fashion to subordination.

Most constituents (both phrases and clauses) can be coordinated, but the extent to which this is possible will differ across languages. The conjuncts may be marked as such by separate descriptors: NP etc. However, there are many occasions where the conjuncts are not of the same formal category, or where they do not correspond to an entire phrasal or clausal constituent. There is much to be said, in these cases, or perhaps for all cases of coordination, for the use of a generalised label applied to all coordinate constituents or conjuncts, e.g. the label CO used in the TOSCA system. We do not offer a definitive solution for the annotation of coordination, and the many variants of coordination will not be considered further in this report. See Sampson (1995: 310f) for a detailed treatment.