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The Coordinate Structure Constraint as a Discourse-Oriented Principle: Further Evidence from Japanese and Korean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Yusuke Kubota and
Jungmee Lee
Yusuke Kubota*
Affiliation:
University of Tsukuba and The Ohio State University
Jungmee Lee*
Affiliation:
Seoul National University of Science and Technology
*
Kubota, 108A Ohio Stadium East, 1961 Tuttle Park Place, Columbus, OH 43210, [kubota.7@osu.edu]
Lee, 334 Eoui Hall, 232 Gongneung-ro, Nowon-gu, Seoul 139-743, South Korea, [jungmeelee@seoultech.ac.kr]
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Abstract

We reexamine the status of the coordinate structure constraint (CSC; Ross 1967) by drawing on evidence from Japanese and Korean. Contrary to the standard view that the CSC is a syntactic constraint, the empirical patterns from the two languages show that it should instead be viewed as a pragmatic principle. We propose a pragmatic analysis by building on and extending a previous proposal by Kehler (2002). Examining the Japanese and Korean data turns out to be vital in the comparison of the syntactic and pragmatic approaches, since the syntactic differences between the relevant constructions in the two languages and their counterparts in English crucially distinguish the predictions of the two approaches.

Keywords

coordinate structure constraintJapaneseKoreancoordinationsubordinationisland constraintsdiscourse relation

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 91 , Issue 3 , September 2015, pp. 642 - 675
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Linguistic Society of America

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