In linguistics, coordination is a complex syntactic structure that links together two or more elements; these elements are called conjuncts or conjoins. The presence of coordination is often signaled by the appearance of a coordinator (coordinating conjunction), e.g. and, or, but (in English). The totality of coordinator(s) and conjuncts forming an instance of coordination is called a coordinate structure. The unique properties of coordinate structures have motivated theoretical syntax to draw a broad distinction between coordination and subordination. It is also one of the many constituency tests in linguistics. Coordination is one of the most studied fields in theoretical syntax, but despite decades of intensive examination, theoretical accounts differ significantly and there is no consensus on the best analysis.
A coordinator or a coordinating conjunction, often appears between the conjuncts, usually at least between the penultimate and ultimate conjunct of the coordinate structure. The words and and or are by far the most frequently occurring coordinators in English. Other coordinators occur less often and have unique properties, e.g. but, as well as, then, etc. The coordinator usually serves to link the conjuncts and indicate the presence of a coordinate structure. Depending on the number of coordinators used, coordinate structures can be classified as syndetic, asyndetic, or polysyndetic.
Different types of coordinators are also categorised differently. The table below shows the categories for the coordinators in English:
Coordination is a very flexible mechanism of syntax. Any given or can be coordinated. The examples throughout this article employ the convention whereby the conjuncts of coordinate structures are marked using square brackets and bold script. In the following examples, the coordinate structure includes all the material that follows the left-most square bracket and precedes the right-most square bracket. The coordinator appears in normal script between the conjuncts.
[Sarah] and [Xolani] went to town.
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In linguistics, gapping is a type of ellipsis that occurs in the non-initial conjuncts of coordinate structures. Gapping usually elides minimally a finite verb and further any non-finite verbs that are present. This material is "gapped" from the non-initial conjuncts of a coordinate structure. Gapping exists in many languages, but by no means in all of them, and gapping has been studied extensively and is therefore one of the more understood ellipsis mechanisms.
In linguistics, ellipsis (from ἔλλειψις, élleipsis 'omission') or an elliptical construction is the omission from a clause of one or more words that are nevertheless understood in the context of the remaining elements. There are numerous distinct types of ellipsis acknowledged in theoretical syntax. Theoretical accounts of ellipsis seek to explain its syntactic and semantic factors, the means by which the elided elements are recovered, and the status of the elided elements.
In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970 reformulating the ideas of Zellig Harris (1951,) and further developed by Ray Jackendoff (1974, 1977a, 1977b), along the lines of the theory of generative grammar put forth in the 1950s by Chomsky. It attempts to capture the structure of with a single uniform structure called the X-bar schema, basing itself on the assumption that any phrase in natural language is an XP (X phrase) that is headed by a given X.
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