Two types of coordination in clause combining

This paper argues for a constructional approach to the analysis of coordination in English, with comparative evidence from a number of other Germanic languages. The analysis of coordination proposed here is functionally based on the notion of illocutionary force and formally reflected in the behavior of the basic clause types (declarative–imperative–interrogative) in the clauses that make up the coordinate construction. On the one hand, it is argued that this approach can help to explain why traditional syntactic criteria like clause order and word order can be used to distinguish coordinate constructions from subordinate ones, and that it can easily handle cases where one conjunction allows both coordinate and subordinate construal. On the other hand, it is argued that this approach also allows one to make a subdivision within the coordinate category depending on the presence or absence of restrictions in illocution type for the second member of the coordinate construction, and that this subdivision allows for a principled account of other features which subdivide the coordinate domain, like subject ellipsis and use in conjoining non-clausal categories.