# Why can't he2 (和) conjoin sentences?



## Sibutlasi

All Chinese textbooks and grammars I have seen carefully warn beginners that 和“he2” can coordinate noun phrases, but not sentences. Yet, none, to my knowledge, offers an *explanation* for that peculiar fact, and it IS a peculiar fact. 

Since Mandarin "he2" supports the logical "&" reading in sentences like (1)



"wo3 peng2you he2 wo3 (dou1) xue2xi wai4yu3" 
 
= English: My friend and I (both) study foreign languages. (‘reduced’ version)
= English: My friend studies foreign languages and I (also) study foreign languages. 
                (fully explicit, but redundant, and so not used, in general)

without the implication of ‘togetherness’ that it may have in other cases (note that the Mandarin sentence, like its English counterparts, clearly describes TWO separate states of affairs and, at the semantic level, encodes TWO different conjoined propositions, not one), why can´t it also act as a full-sentence coordinator in ungrammatical expressions like (2)? 



*"[wo3 peng1you xue2xi de2yu3] *he2 [wo3 xue2xi ying1yu3]" 
 
Obviously, the reason cannot be ‘semantic’ (= related to the meaning of “he2”), or (1) would not be an adequate translation for the English sentence above (in either version), nor phonological, since the local contexts are equivalent, even rhythmically equivalent (= dysyllabic N + he2 + wo3), nor morphological (since “he2” is not an affix, and, even if it were, the local contexts are exactly equivalent, as stated). 

It must, therefore, be ‘syntactic’, but what is it? Is “he2” in (1) and (2) syntactically a ‘preposition’, rather than a 'conjunction', perhaps? That seems plausible when “he2” induces the interpretation that two entities participated together in a single event (not exemplified here), but what about cases like (1) in which joint participation in a single learning event is out of the question? Obviously, the same objection would apply if "he2" were at bottom a verb meaning "accompany" or something similar.

In sum: If “he2” can act, semantically, as a two-place propositional function in (1) to yield the interpretation corresponding to the English glosses above, why can´t it also do so in (2), where the two items to be coordinated are obviously propositional?

Can anybody out there offer a proper *explanation* of this well-known but, to my knowledge, unexplained behavior of “he2”?

Thank you in advance.


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## zhg

Maybe you haven't noticed that it's more common to say "me and my friends" than "my friends and I" in Chinese. I don't know why 和 can't link sentences too, but we sure do have other words to link senteces with parellel structures.


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## Sibutlasi

No, I did not know that "wo3 he2 wo3 peng2you" sounded better than "wo3 peng2you he2 wo3". Thank you for that fact!

S.


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## SuperXW

Excuse for my shallow knowledge on linguistics. I might not fully understand you question, but I'll reply anyway. 
The usage of 和 is limited to nouns, noun phrases and actions, but principally not applicable to verbs, verb phrases or clauses, because...apparently nouns and verbs are different! 
We always have different rules for different parts of speech, don't we? Why so surprised? 

Ok, in your case, 
"My friend studies foreign languages and I (also) study foreign languages."
Now I want to ask you, why "and"? Is there any relationship between the two things? No! Whether your friend studies Germany has nothing to do with whether you study English! If there is any relation, you would use "because", "for", "since", "then"...Why "and"?
I think, "and" is merely a "filler" here, which doesn't mean anything. You can delete it and separate the sentence anyway.
Chinese grammar just don't approve using 和 as a filler. 
By the way, we do have other fillers. For "My friend studies Germany. I study English." We sometimes use 还有(what's more), 然后(and then), 而(while), 不过(but) as the conjunction. Don't you think all of these words make sense? 
And, for 不过(but), we only use it on verbs, verb phrases and clauses, not on nouns, noun phrases. You may also be interested in 不过.

Usually, when a Chinese say "wo3 peng2you he2 wo3 xue2xi wai4yu3", what they really emphasize is:
"My friend is studying foreign language WITH me."
One of 和's meaning is "with".

If they want to emphasize "both", they'll add "dou1" for that.

Maybe I didn't really get your question. In that case, just ignore my "defense".


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## stellari

SuperXW said:


> [...] The usage of 和 is limited to nouns, noun phrases and actions, but  principally not applicable to verbs, verb phrases or clauses,  because...apparently nouns and verbs are different! [...]


Second to this answer. From a Chinese perspective, the 'and' is almost syntactically unnecessary, since it does not suggest any non-trivial logical relationship between the two sentences. When I started learning English, I always forgot I should put an 'and' in between two sentences, since in Chinese it is more customary not to do so.


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## Skatinginbc

English discourse connective "_and_" can be used for temporal  ordering, contrast/conflict, parallel inference or independent  strengthening, to name just a few.  Mandarin does not  have a generic sentential conjunction like "_and_".  Rather, it employs different cohesive devices for different cases (e.g., 而 er2 for contrast/conflict; 并且 bing4 qie3 for parallel inference).  For instance, the "and" in "Her husband is still in the hospital and she is having an affair" corresponds to Chinese  而 er2. 


Sibutlasi said:


> *"[wo3 peng1you xue2xi de2yu3] *he2 [wo3 xue2xi ying1yu3]"


Your example implies a contrast, and so we have: 我朋友学习德语, 而我学习英语 "wo3 peng2you3 xue2xi2 de2yu3, er2 wo3 xue2xi2 ying1yu3."  


Sibutlasi said:


> "wo3 peng2you he2 wo3 (dou1) xue2xi wai4yu3"


Let "&" stand for the coordinating connective in the deep structure.  In English, the surface realization of "&" is "_and_" in nearly all cases, and so your example looks like a simple deletion of "_studies foreign languages_" from "My friend (_studies foreign languages_) and I study foreign languages".  In Chinese, the surface realization of "&" can vary or even become ∅ (absent) depending on the environments or contexts.  和 he2, which cannot serve as a discourse connective, is only one of several possible surface realizations for "&".  In 虎豹不足为患 "Tigers (and) leopards are not numerous enough to be a concern", the coordinating conjunction is absent in the surface structure.   


Sibutlasi said:


> what  about cases like (1) in which joint participation in a single learning  event is out of the question?


和我学习英语 could mean "learn English from me", "learn English with me", or "and I learn English".  To avoid ambiguity, the word 都 dou1" becomes a _necessity_.  Thus 和...都 serves as a pair, like "both...and", to link elements of _equal importance_.  In that case, 和 is a conjunction.


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## Sibutlasi

SuperXW said:


> The usage of 和 is limited to nouns, noun phrases and actions, but principally not applicable to verbs, verb phrases or clauses, because...apparently nouns and verbs are different![...]


Thank you very much for your answer and the info in it, some of which  was new to me. It is a bit out of focus, though, so let me try to  sharpen my question somewhat. 
The gist of the matter is this: 

A) IF my sentence (1) "wo3 he2 wo3 peng2you xue2xi wai4yu3" can be truly  said, in a certain context, even though I study in Beijing, whereas my  friend studies in Shanghai (or I am in my second year, whereas my friend  is older and is in his fourth year, etc.) and therefore, in that case,  we do not really study together and it would be inaccurate to translate  it as "My friend studies foreign languages WITH me", then *either*  of my English glosses thereof above is accurate, although, of course,   "My friend and I study foreign languages", sounds much more natural. "My  friend studies foreign languages and I (also) study foreign languages"  is unnecessarily redundant and not likely to be used. We would normally  replace it with reduced forms like "My friend studies foreign languages  and *so do* I/*me too*". However, that  fact would NOT imply that sentence (1) cannot ALSO, in other contexts,  be meant by the speaker and/or interpreted by the hearer as "We study  foreign languages TOGETHER" ; that tacit modification and the  corresponding inference by the hearer are always possible when English  "and" (or Chinese "he2", I assume) are involved. 

B) If condition A) is satisfied, then it is obvious that "he2" CAN  induce an interpretation that can only be glossed in English by  expressions that encode TWO 'propositions': [My 
friend studies foreign languages], [I study foreign languages]. Whether  we choose to (redundantly) express those TWO propositions in full, with  or without the aid of "and" or not (e.g., as in "My friend studies  foreign languages. Me, too.", or "My friend studies foreign languages. I  do, too.", or "My friend studies foreign languages and so do I", or "My  friend and I study foreign languages", etc.) is only a matter of  'stylistic' preference, so to speak, a detail of 'surface form' that  does not affect the 'deep' meaning we are conveying.

C) If "he2" CAN produce that effect, it should be able to produce it  also when the 'surface form' chosen by/imposed on Chinese speakers is  two clauses encoding one proposition each, i.e., a 'compound' sentence.  That will never happen when the predicate is the same, since in that  case the encoding "NP1 + he2 + NP2" will always be available and is less  redundant, but it WILL necessarily happen when the predicate is  different, e. g. when one of the individuals involved studies German and  the other French, or one lives in Beijing and the other in Shanghai,  etc.

D) Consequently, the use of "he2" between two sentences to form a  'compound sentence' should NOT be UNGRAMMATICAL; it could at most be  REDUNDANT, if Chinese has the alternative of merely juxtaposing the two  sentences, as it does (although that necessarily causes redundancy elsewhere:  the repetition of the same verb). 

That is what you say, at bottom ("Why "and", which adds nothing?"),  but you are wrong in that: as a minimum, "and" also expresses a certain important  'relation' (properly: one of a subset of relations called 'functions'; in particular, it is a 'two-place propositional function'),  minimally that of joint existence of two states of affairs in a certain  logical world (and it MAY, depending on context, support more specific 'relations' like 'and then', 'and yet', 'then', 'cause' or, indeed,  'togetherness', as in our example). Note that it is NOT possible to drop "and" in "My  friend and I study foreign languages", and that dropping "and" in other  cases has an efficiency cost, as you block the possibility of reducing  the second clause (via ellipsis or 'gapping'). Think of cases like "I have ordered a  pizza and my friend a cheese omelette". Drop "and" and you will have to  repeat the complex verb in full, making your speech redundant.  Nevertheless, I never questioned the sensibleness of dropping  "and"/"he2" when that is POSSIBLE, or the fact that Chinese prefers to  use more specific conjunction devices (i.e., expressions that mean MORE  than just coexistence of two states of affairs, like "er", "bingqie",  "haishi", etc.). And, in particular, the fact that "he2" licenses  interpretations that may best be rendered into English through the  preposition "with" is unproblematic to me.

In sum: What puzzles me, in view of what precedes in A) and B), is just that "he2" should be *rigidly prevented* from conjoining two clauses (and *ungrammatical*, *not merely redundant*, in that case). 

[On the contrary, the fact that 不过 meaning approximately "but" should  not be possible between noun(phrase)s does not puzzle me in the least  ! Note that "but" is also impossible in NP__NP contexts (excluding  cases like "All his friends but you attended his wedding" or "He invited  all his friends but you", where "but" means "except" and arguably is a  preposition, not a coordinator)]

I hope this explains what really underlies my question. Please excuse me if, in my attempt to be as precise as possible, I have still inadvertently lapsed into the linguist's jargon. 

S.


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## Sibutlasi

Skatinginbc said:


> English discourse connective "_and_"  can be used for temporal  ordering, contrast/conflict, parallel  inference or independent  strengthening, to name just a few.[...]


Thank you! 

I knew that Chinese prefers to employ specific sentence connectors  instead of a general purpose one. Yet, in this respect I'm a bit  surprised by your rendition of BOTH the "and" (= and yet) in "Her  husband is still in hospital and she is having an affair" and that in  "My friend studies German and I study English" as "er2". The relations  within each pair of sentences seem to me very different: in the first  case "and" (hence "er2") seems to mean "and yet" or "and in spite of  that", which suggest a very strong negative expectation on the part of  the speaker, whereas in the second case there can be no such  presupposition and the contrast, if it is anything but addition, is very  weak and exclusively due to the use of a new direct object. Note that  in the second case it is barely possible to use "whereas", but "*and  yet" or "*and in spite of that" would be completely out of the question:  "? My friend studies German and yet I study English". 

Anyway, I'll add "er2" to my Chinese discourse cohesion resources from now on 

Even more surprising to me is your statement that "...和我学习英语" could mean  "learn English from me", "learn English with me", as well as "and I  learn English". Of course, that is extremely interesting, but I´m  completely in the dark as to how it could have the first two meanings.:-(

As to your final sentence, do you mean that 和 is a conjunction ONLY in the case "dou1" follows the two-membered NP? Is "he2 wo3" not part of a two-membered subject but rather a 'prepositional phrase' modifier similar to "gen1 wo3" when "dou1" does NOT follow the subject? If so, in "wo3 peng1you he2 wo3 xue2xi wai4yu3" the subject would be just "wo3 pengyou", "he2 wo3" would be a comitative pre-modifier of the verb, and, of course, the sentence would not contain a coordination at all. But in that case only the reading "My friend studies foreign languages with me" should be licensed. If that sentence licenses the reading "My friend studies foreign languages and so do I" and may be truly said even if my friend is in Beijing whereas I am in Shanghai, then we have a new problem, as far as I can tell.

Finally, as to the real focus of my question, I have just added a bit of  clarification in my reply to SuperXW, but I can perhaps refer to it here,  since your third paragraph shows that you can understand what I'm  talking about: What puzzles me is the fact that "he2"  should be ungrammatical as a conjunctive coordinator of sentences,  rather than merely redundant, and so dispensable, and it puzzles me  because if "he2" can add the truth conditional meaning it adds in "wo3  he2 wo3 peng2you (dou1) xue2xi wai4yu3" it must be able to minimally  encode the two-place propositional function "&" (possibly plus  context-sensitive implicatures like 'togetherness', etc.), and if it can  encode it in that case it should be able to encode it in "wo3 peng2you  xue2xi de2yu3 *he2 wo3 xue2xi fa3yu3" as well. If so, it might be felt  as redundant and dropped from the phonetic form representation, or not  strong enough and replaced with "er2", but why should it be radically  ungrammatical? There is some more detail in my earlier reply to SuperXW's  post.

Thank you for your attention.

S.


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## Skatinginbc

Sibutlasi said:


> IF my sentence (1) "wo3 he2 wo3 peng2you xue2xi wai4yu3" can be truly  said, in a certain context, even though I study in Beijing, whereas my  friend studies in Shanghai


Can it?  What does 我和我朋友学习外语 "wo3 he2 wo3 peng2you xue2xi wai4yu3" actually mean?
Compare the following: 
(1) 我和我朋友都学过外语 ==> *谁和我朋友都学过外语? *"Who and my friend studied foreign languages?"  *和我朋友都学过外语的那一个人 *"the person who and my friend has studied foreign languages" 
(2) 我和我朋友学过外语 ==> 谁和我朋友学过外语? "Who has studied foreign languages with my friend?" or, in some dialects, possibly "Who has learned foreign languages from my friend?"  和我朋友学过外语的那一个人 "the person who has studied foreign languages with my friend".  

A: 谁学过外语? "Who has studied foreign languages?"
B: 我和我朋友(都学过外语), or 我和我朋友(都)学过外语 (The fact that 都 may be implied doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the underlying structure), or 我, 小王, (和) 小林都学过外语 (The fact that 和 may be implied doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the underlying structure).  

If I say "What you are talking about?", you probably would understand what I mean is "What are you talking about?"  By the same token, if I say 我和我朋友学习外语 even though I study in Beijing, whereas my friend studies in Shanghai, people may still understand from the context, but that doesn't mean it is universally considered well-formed as a complete, independent sentence.  Honestly, 我和我朋友学习外语 sounds like a dependent clause due to its non-finite verb, not to mention the ambiguity in meaning. I would normally say 我和我朋友都学过外语, 我和我朋友都在学外语, 我和我朋友都是学外语的, and so forth. 


Sibutlasi said:


> "er2"


The beauty of 而 is that it can introduce new or contrastive information without making too much or explicit emphasis on the contrast--very much functioning like English "and".  For instance, in 多而杂 "numerous and diverse", it simply adds new information.  So the 而 in 我朋友学习德语, 而我学习英语 introduces new information and still allows the implication of contrast.


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## YangMuye

I initially wrote the reply when the thread started but didn't post it, because they might look "irrelevant".  But as there is already so much "irrelevant" information here, I decide to post it.

1. 和 is not logical operator AND

There are some difference between set operator AND and logical operator AND.
我和他 forms a new entity consist of two entities 我 and 他.
高且帅 forms a new proposition, which is true iif both proposition 高 and 帅 are true.

We must also see that some words can be used to connect verbs, adjectives, and some adverbials, some can be used to connect certain types of adverbials, while some can be used to connect nouns. e.g. (in Chinese, English, Japanese, and Mathematics)

　　Nominals: 我*和*他, You *and* he, 私*と*彼, {I}∪{he}={I, he}
　　Adverbials: 对我*和*对他, for him *and* for me, 私に*且*彼に, {∀e.RECEPTOR(e,I)}∪{∀e.RECEPTOR(e,him)}≡{∀e.RECEPTOR(e,I), ∀e.RECEPTOR(e,Him)}
　　Verbs: 高*且*大, high *and* huge, 高く*て*大きい, ∀x.High(x)∧Huge(x)

The first two processes both result in a set. Whichever type of conjunction you use, “和” or “或”, it will not make much difference. However, the choice may affect quantification.

　　我*和*他是学生 -- ∀x∈{I, he}:Student(x)
　　我*或*他是学生 -- ∃x∈{I, he}:Student(x)

However, in Chinese, in many cases, they are interchangeable.

　　禁止钓鱼*和/或*游泳 -- ∀x∈{swimming, fishing}rohibited(x)
　　可以打的*和/或*步行 -- ∀x∈{by taxi, on foot}ermitted(x)

Especially when other quantifier are used.

　　我*和/或*他*都*=我们*都* -- ∀x∈{I, he}:Student(x)

In negative sentences, 和 and 或 are usually interchangeable.

　　我*和*他不是学生 -- ∀x∈{I, he}:¬Student(x)
　　我*或*他不是学生 -- ∀x∈{I, he}:¬Student(x)

If no quantification is involved, 和 is usually the only choice.

　　我*和*他是朋友=我们是朋友 -- Friendship({I, he})

The third process results in a predicative, and does not involve any quantification.

The result of quantification is often that you can expand the original proposition to several one joined by logical "AND" or "OR". It doesn't mean that these resulted logical "AND" or "OR" are the same as or should be mapped back to the set operators. They must be different otherwise you can explain sentences like 我和他是朋友=我们是朋友, where there is no quantification or logical conjunction. 我是朋友 doesn't make sense.

Moreover, 和 or 或 is not really needed when you are listing three or more items.

　　天、地、人
　　你、我、他

Even there are only two items, 和 can be omitted if only proper name is involved.

　　北京、上海
　　*Skatinginbc、我 (It sounds like Skatinginbc and I are the same one)

Usually, either 和 or 或 is used, not not both. I can find some examples that 和 and 或 are nested in the same phrase, but usually, only one is used.

2. I believe, most conjunctions are need for their conversational function, rather than logical implementation. 

As far as no special moods are concerned, all statements you say are naturally joined by the logic operator AND. You don't really need AND to connect them. In fact, you never use "and" and "or" in purely logical sense. Logical AND is often implied and logical OR is often rendered as uncertainty or conditionals. 或 might originally mean "sometimes", to express an uncertain possibility. 或 is not used to connect sentences.  In Chinese, a more common way to express logical OR is to use certain conditional forms. According to the logical axiom ¬P→Q ≡ P∨Q ≡ ¬Q→P, e.g. 否则 literally means "if it is not that case then it is".

I feel in English, when using "or" to connect sentence, you often expect the first sentence to be true or false. Switching the two clauses' positions is often impossible, while in logic both propositions are treated equally. Thus the use of conjunction "and" in English must also have some reasons other than purely logical ones. In fact, many conjunctions don't provide any new information, it seems that the reason they are used is to form a more coherent conversation easier for the listener to understand. Different languages behave differently here.

It's interesting that in Chinese, connecting the following sentences without any conjunction is just OK.

　　他学英语。我学德语

But in Japanese, you have to use the particle は in the second sentence to show he and I are different. This is obligatory as far as you know you are talking about the same aspect of different subjects, and they are different. In Chinese, we can add an adverb 则 to make the two sentence more coherent.

　　他学英语。我*则*学德语。

If we change the sentence slightly as follows, it would sound very awkward.

　　*他学英语。我学英语
　　*他学德语。他学英语

Instead, you must say add 也. The adding of 也 is obligatory. In Japanese, も instead of は is used.

　　他学英语，我*也*学英语.
　　他学德语。他*也*学英语
　　他学德语。他*还*学英语

I don't know why Japanese is always faced with a choice between は and も, while Chinese only uses 则 when needed. But in Chinese, we have to make another choice among 则, 却, 才, 还, 也, 就, 是, 都, 可, 并, 都, etc.

It seems to me that, whether or not to use these conjunctions or conjunctive adverbs has more to do with the speaker's intent of utterance, the conversational function, rather than their logical implications.

3.

Is 和 a preposition or a conjunction? I think its common to see a verb becomes a preposition and then becomes a conjunction. Other examples include 跟, 同, 与. 跟 is the same as 和. I feel 同 is more likely to be used as a preposition, but its conjunction usage is OK. 与's preposition usage is slight different from 和, 跟 and 同.

I think all these prepositions/conjunctions were originally verbs. 跟 meant "to accompany", 同 meant "as well as/to resemble", 和 might meant something like "get along with", but I'm not sure and I don't know what did 与 mean. Skatinginbc might give a better explanation for them.  So 我和/跟/同他 might have originally mean something like "I accompanied by him", "I as well as him", "I along with him", etc.

Other examples include "(从)...到...". Whether ...到... is a single noun phrase or an noun plus a prepositional phrase is often ambiguous in both Chinese and Japanese. Some verbs can be used in this way too. e.g 土豆*加*牛肉。

As in the example given by Skatinginbc and SuperXW, 和 can be ambiguous. It can be either a preposition or a conjunction.
In Japanese, they can solve this by judging from the position of the subject marker は. In Chinese, as Skatinginbc suggested, inserting adverbs like 都,也,etc.. solves this problem. e.g. 

　　我*也*和我朋友学英语 (preposition use)
　　我和我朋友*也*学英语 (Arguably the ambiguity remains, because 也 can be attached to a prepositional phrase ...)
　　我*在*和我朋友学英语 (preposition use)
　　我和我朋友*在*学英语 (conjunction use)

In practice, there is no ambiguity in the meaning. But there is an exception: 和 sometimes means "with" rather than "both" or "together". The following sentences tend to be interrupted the same.

　　我在*和*我朋友学英语
　　我在*跟*我朋友学英语
　　我在*同*我朋友学英语
　　我在*向*我朋友学英语

与 cannot be used in this way.

　　*我在*与*我朋友学英语

----

BTW, *Skatinginbc*, why are you keeping deleting your posts?


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## Skatinginbc

YangMuye said:


> BTW, *Skatinginbc*, why are you keeping deleting your posts?


Because I have a habit of duplicating a post by accident when making a correction.  I tried to be careful, but still...Stupid me.  My apology.


Sibutlasi said:


> minimally that of joint existence of two states of affairs in a certain logical world


A: "John is studying German.  Gary is studying English."
B: "John is studying German and Gary is studying English."
How do we determine who is correct and who is wrong?  If John is not studying German, then both A and B are wrong at least in some aspect.  If Gary is not studying English, then both A and B are wrong at least in some aspect.  Same tests are used to judge the truth/false of their utterances.  What I'm getting at is that when several states of affairs are mentioned side by side, we automatically see it as "joint existence" by default, unless there is a linguistic device to _mark_ otherwise (e.g., "By the way" in "He said his daughter is studying German.  By the way, his son is studying English."  他说他女儿在学德语.  对了, 他儿子在学英语). 

C: What did he say to you? 他跟你说了什么? 
D: He said his daughter is studying German and his son is studying English.  他说他女儿在学德语, 儿子在学英语
Even if we do not hear the "and" in (D) as it might occur in casual conversation, we would still interpret it as joint existence, not something marked like "by the way".  What I mean is that the “and” is not so much for a logical reason as for a syntactic reason (like the "and" in "birth, old age, sickness, and death" = "birth & old age & sickness & death", which is 生, 老, 病, 死 in Chinese, without a conjunction).   "他说他女儿在学德语, 儿子在学英语" involves the use of ellipsis of 他 in 他儿子 to mark the joint existence.    

E: John didn't go to school; he was sick.
F: John didn't go to school and he was sick.
Same logical tests are applied to the truth/false of their respective statements--Either "John went to school" or "John wasn't sick" could negate their utterances.  So, why do we need an "and" in (F)?  Obviously, it is more than just an operator of joint existence.  It is a linguistic device to MARK parallel inference.  Consequently, in Chinese translation it would be MARKED as well with a conjunction: 约翰沒去上学, *而且**还*生了病.

汤姆和玛丽结婚了 Tom married Mary (They are a couple; 和 is a preposition). vs. 汤姆和玛丽都结婚了Tom and Mary are both married (they are not a couple; 和...都 is a conjunction to *mark* parallel inference.  都 usually cannot be omitted.  If it is missing as it might occur in some rare occasions, the context must be clear enough to infer Tom and Mary's relation).


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## YangMuye

Skatinginbc said:


> 汤姆和玛丽结婚了 Tom married Mary (They are a couple; 和 is a preposition). vs. 汤姆和玛丽都结婚了Tom and Mary are both married (they are not a couple; 和...都 is a conjunction to *mark* parallel inference.  都 usually cannot be omitted.  If it is missing as it might occur in some rare occasions, the context must be clear enough to infer Tom and Mary's relation).


 Good observation! I should have mentioned that.

It's clear that the verb 结婚 accepts both(/either?) two-individual-argument usage and(/or?) one-collective-argument usage, as showed in the following sentences:

　　他们(昨天)结婚了
　　他(昨天)和她结婚了
　　他和她(昨天)结婚了

For this kind of verbs, we tend to consider all the agents are engaged in the same instance of event at the same time. Thus no quantification is used. However, the adverb 都 can be used to force the quantification. In Japanese, there are many different 並立助詞, some explicitly prohibit the interpretation that all agents are engaged in the same event.

　　他和他妻子结婚了 : Married(he, she)
　　他和她都结婚了 : ∀x∈{he, she}: Married(x)
　　所有人都结婚了 : ∀x∈S: Married(x), S is a group of people, known from the context

However, when the context is clear, 都 is not needed.

　　他大儿子和二儿子结婚了


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## Sibutlasi

Sibutlasi said:


> <...> Even more surprising to me is your statement that  "...和我学习英语" could mean  "learn English from me", "learn English with  me", as well as "and I  learn English". Of course, that is extremely  interesting, but I´m  completely in the dark as to how it could have the  first two meanings.:-( <...>



Oh, I see what you [= Skatinginbc, #6]  mean. Sorry, I misunderstood you because in my original post I  deliberately excluded OTHER meanings that "...和我学习英语" may have IF we  assign to it a DIFFERENT syntactic structure (recall my mentioning  "without the implication of 'togetherness' that it(=和) may have in *other*  cases"). 

Obviously, when Chinese "和我" is NOT part of a coordinate  subject, but a separate prepositional phrase pre-modifying the verb  "xue2xi", then I'm sure it may straightforwardly mean "with me", and I would not be surprised at all if it could also mean "from me" (= "with me [acting as a teacher]"), as you say. That is also a perfectly possible interpretation of "with" if I say in  English "I learnt linguistics WITH Chomsky" (= from Chomsky, with  Chomsky as my teacher), but, by assumption, such structures were  irrelevant to my question from the start. The only reading I asked about here is the reading "... and I study foreign languages" (alternatively realised as "and so do I"/ "and me too", etc.) that emerges when "wo3  peng2you he2 wo3" is analysed as a coordinate subject (= [NP "he2" NP])  of which a single predicate is predicated. Only in that case can the  two-proposition interpretation that I am interested in emerges, and only in that case can the conjoined [S and S]  sentence be 'reduced' (by Conjunction Reduction) to the structurally unambiguous "My friend and I study foreign languages". Note that the English string "My friend and I" cannot be syntactically ambiguous im the sense the Chinese string "wo3 peng2you he2 wo3" can, because a) "and I" cannot be anything but the second member of an  [NP [and NP]] coordinate NP, since "and" is a coordinating conjunction, but not a preposition, and b)  (non-dislocated) prepositional phrases (like that) cannot precede verbs  anyway (cf. the ungrammaticality of "*I with my friend studied foreign languages."). We can, therefore, safely leave Chinese [NP [PP[V+NP]]] structures aside and concentrate on the real issue.

S.


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## Sibutlasi

Skatinginbc said:


> Can it?



Sibutlasi: Can´t it? Would that sentence not be true just because I study in Beijing whereas my friend studies in Shanghai? I doubt it....



Skatinginbc said:


> What does 我和我朋友学习外语 "wo3 he2 wo3 peng2you xue2xi wai4yu3" actually mean?
> Compare the following:
> (1) 我和我朋友都学过外语 ==> *谁和我朋友都学过外语? *"Who and my friend studied foreign languages?"  *和我朋友都学过外语的那一个人 *"the person who and my friend has studied foreign languages"



Sibutlasi:  I fail to see how your examples in (1) can be used to argue for any  thesis except that "he2" is a coordinating conjunction in them (an idea I  assumed as a matter of course, as explained in my previous post). Those  are simple violations of Ross' (1967 MIT Thesis) 'Coordinate Structure  Constraint', according to which nothing can be extracted from an [NP and  NP] structure (actually: from an [XP and XP] structure). On the  contrary, in some languages it IS possible to extract NPs from  non-coordinate PPs leaving the P 'stranded'. 



Skatinginbc said:


> (2) 我和我朋友学过外语 ==> 谁和我朋友学过外语? "Who has studied foreign languages with my friend?" or, in some dialects, possibly "Who has learned foreign languages from my friend?"  和我朋友学过外语的那一个人 "the person who has studied foreign languages with my friend".



Sibutlasi: Well, here you are! . The grammaticality of your examples in (2) shows only that 和我 朋友 is NOT the second coordinate after "shei2", but an independent  prepositional? phrase. In your first example that does not show overtly  because Chinese is a "wh-in-situ" language, as Huang (1982) proved  beyond doubt. Your second example, however, does show that the 'gap'  before "和" in the modifier "with my friend  has studied foreign languages" can be associated with the nominal 那一个人,  which PROVES that the only 'subject' of the modifying phrase is the  nominal 那一个人. That, in turn, proves that in such cases we are not  talking about coordinate [NP1 he2 NP2]s, either, and that your  'evidence' is perfectly irrelevant to the problem I raised.



Skatinginbc said:


> A: 谁学过外语? "Who has studied foreign languages?"
> B: 我和我朋友(都学过外语), or 我和我朋友(都)学过外语 (The fact that 都 may be implied doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the underlying structure), or 我, 小王, (和) 小林都学过外语 (The fact that 和 may be implied doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the underlying structure).



Sibutlasi:  I do not know whether "dou1" may exist and yet be null at Phonetic  Structure, but I believe you. That does not matter; what does matter is  that in cases like these "dou1" must be associated with a preceding DUAL  or PLURAL NP. If in your B: examples the syntactic structure is [NP1:  wo2 Coordinator: he2 NP2: wo3 peng1you], there is no problem: the  coordinate NP has dual/plural properties. However, if the structure is  Subject: wo3 + [PP = he2 wo3 peng1you] +[VP], then there is a problem,  i.e., that the dual/plural feature that "dou1" requires in its  antecedent NP cannot be satisfied by a singular NP like "wo3" together  with an unrelated PP containing another singular NP. Thus, what your  examples prove is that if "dou1" is present at Phonetic Form, then "wo3  he2 wo3 peng1you" MUST have the structure [NP1 he2 NP2] (which, of  course, I assumed from the start (look at my example (1) if you doubt  it).



Skatinginbc said:


> If I say "What you are talking about?", you probably would understand  what I mean is "What are you talking about?"  By the same token, if I  say 我和我朋友学习外语 even though I study in Beijing, whereas my friend studies  in Shanghai, people may still understand from the context, but that  doesn't mean it is universally considered well-formed as a complete,  independent sentence.  Honestly, 我和我朋友学习外语 sounds like a dependent  clause due to its non-finite verb, not to mention the ambiguity in  meaning. I would normally say 我和我朋友都学过外语, 我和我朋友都在学外语, 我和我朋友都是学外语的, and so forth.



Sibutlasi:  No problem; note that I included "dou1" between parentheses already in  my example (1). To all purposes you may count my example (1) as  including "dou1". I thought it was possible to drop it (in sufficient  context), and that is why I used parentheses. But, even if it is NOT  possible to drop it (when the intended interpretation is that of a  coordinate [NP "he2" NP], that is), that does not change anything! I  accept (I did from the start, at bottom) that "dou1", due to its  requirement of a dual/plural NP to its left, has a disambiguating  function when present: it excludes the PP analysis (and interpretation)  of "he2+NP". If that is so, the structure could remain ambiguous only  when "dou1" is NOT present, or present but not phonetically realized (a  possibility I did not know about, but which you have just added to the  discussion).



Skatinginbc said:


> The beauty of 而 is that it can introduce new  or contrastive information without making too much or explicit emphasis  on the contrast--very much functioning like English "and".  For  instance, in 多而杂 "numerous and diverse", it simply adds new information.  So the 而 in 我朋友学习德语, 而我学习英语 introduces new information and still allows the implication of contrast.



Sibutlasi: No problem. Thank you


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## Skatinginbc

You paraphrased my posts, Sibutlasi, and I'm glad you got most of my points.  Now that we have established that "和...都" is a fixed correlative conjunction to encode two conjoined propositions, we can answer the question: Why can't "和...(都)" conjoin two sentences?  Well, it is analogous to why "both...and..." cannot conjoin two sentences.  For instance, *_Both_ he studies foreign language _and_ I study foreign languages *他在学外语和我在学外语(都).  vs. Both he and I study foreign languages 他和我都在学外语.  The ability of conjoining phrases does not automatically guarantee the ability of conjoining sentences.  Of course, one may say: _Both_ "he studies foreign languages" _and_ "I study foreign languages" are correct sentences.  "他在学外语"和"我在学外语"都是正确的句子.  

和 alone works for one-place propositions (e.g., 你和她是一對 You and she are a couple ≠ *你是一對 + *她是一對; *你和她都是一對).  The two nouns "form a new entity" as stated in #10 by YangMuye (somewhat like the "_and_" in "black and white", "bed and breakfast", etc.). 

"和...都..." works for two-place propositions.  Take YangMuye's "他大儿子和二儿子结婚了" for example: The absence of 都, though possible in the surface structure, would make me momentarily confused until I fill it in in my brain and realize what the sentence means is actually 他大儿子和二儿子都结婚了.


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## Sibutlasi

Skatinginbc said:


> You paraphrased my posts, Sibutlasi, and I'm glad you got most of my points.[...]


Well,  I think I rather showed that your examples did not prove what you  intended to prove, . Neither have we "established that "和...都" is a fixed correlative conjunction to encode two conjoined propositions", or that "和 alone works for one-place propositions <...>". 

All we have established is that the addition of the adverb "都",   with its requirement of a dual/plural NP to its left, leaves only one  possible analysis of "wo3 he2 wo3 peng2you dou1....." = [NP1  [Coordinator + NP2]],  making the [NP] [PP = 和+NP] ... analysis  impossible. That's something, but [NP1  [Coord NP2]] structures may still trigger different interpretations  depending on the predicates that follow them: the  two-proposition ones I was interested in, and one-proposition ones that  arise only with special predicates (that I was not). Obviously, the  presence of "都"  will block the one-proposition interpretation of  "Tom and Mary married" (as that of "both" does in English), but the mere  presence of "和" does *not* (just as mere presence of  "and", without "both", leaves open which of the two interpretations of  "Tom and Mary married" is intended in a particular context).

Now, Yangmuye's example 他大儿子和二儿子结婚了shows that the ABSENCE of "都"  does NOT disable the [NP [Coord+NP]] analysis of "wo3 he2  wo3 peng2you", NOR ITS INTERPRETATION(S) as determined by the following  predicates. Hence, "都" is NOT necessary  to obtain two-proposition readings of [[NP1 [he2 NP2]] + SUITABLE  predicate] strings ("都" was between parentheses in my (1)). That shows that "和...都", is not parallel to English "both...and", nor  a "fixed correlative conjunction" (just as English "...and...all"..." is not); "和" and "都"  interact with each other, but  that's all. Contrary to "和", English "both" is a Determiner that  'selects' 'plural' NPs as its 'complements'; a  single plural NP, as in "both students", satisfies its selection  requirements, and so does a coordinate NP, as  in "Both John and her sister (went to Cambridge)", or two plural NPs, as in "Both students  and teachers protested", but the structure  is [Both +[John and her sister]], not *[[Both John] and [her sister]].  If it were, "John" would *not*  satisfy the selection of "both" and the  expression would have to be ungrammatical, but it is not. Thus, "both" does not admit sentences as its  'complements'. Your apparent counterexample is just that: in "_Both_ "he studies foreign languages" _and_ "I study foreign languages" are correct sentences."<...> the metalinguistic use of quotation marks "..." has converted  the embedded sentences into singular nouns, and two coordinated  singular nouns do satisfy "both", as explained.  Any  expression can be turned into a 'name' between quotation  marks. Your 'analogy' between  "和...都" and English "both... and", in other words, collapses completely.

When the predicates are like "study foreign languages", NOT predicable of 'pairs', the ONLY interpretation  is [Proposition-1 [& Proposition-2]], as in my own (and now Yangmuye's 他大儿子和二儿子结婚了) examples, and the  fact that it is possible shows that "和" ALONE ALSO works  for two-propositional structures reduced to [[NP1 [和  NP2]]+ Predicate] form (as I assumed in #1, #7). That  invalidates your second claim  that "和 alone works for one-place propositions", whereas "和... 都..." works for two-place propositions." (assuming you mean  'one/two-proposition interpretations';  "one-place/two-place propositions"  are nonsensical: a proposition, by definition, is a 'zero-place'  function).

I know that in other cases, and still with the SAME syntactic  structure [NP1 [Coord+NP2]], "和",  just like English "and" CANNOT be "&" at Logical Form.  That is a different issue I deliberately set aside. The REAL issue is that NP subjects conjoined with "和" ALONE ("都"  MAY, but NEED NOT, appear) *do*, with suitable predicates (not "make a handsome couple" etc.)  license interpretations that *minimally*  translate into logical form as [P&Q] structures. That must be  due to "和" in them, but "和" is ungrammatical between  sentences that contain exactly the same subjects and predicates and yield the same interpretations. Why? 

I  myself already  excluded a number of possibilities in #1. What I left open  was a possible difference in syntactic category or selection, but  subsequent discussion has shown that, in the relevant examples, "和" is  not a P, nor a V: it is a 'coordinator'. What remains, therefore, is  'selection', i.e., that "和" should syntactically  'select' only NP 'complements'. Essentially, that is SuperXW's answer in  #4, but that is  uncomfortably close to a 'brute fact', and my  question was meant to reduce a brute fact to a rational explanation. My  provisional conclusion then is this: unfortunately, this laborious  discussion has not led us much beyond the brute fact it started  with.That does not mean  that I have not learnt from reading you, or that I do not appreciate  the enormous effort that especially you and Yangmuye have invested in it.


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## Sibutlasi

At this stage, you may reasonably ask me: "OK, but what's wrong, then, with SuperXW's common sense answer that different categories require different coordinators?, and why is the formulation ' "和" 'selects' only NPs' any better, if it is?" 

The only difference with respect to Super XW's answer is that saying that "和" 'selects' only NPs automatically claims that the NPs are its 'complements' and thereby presupposes *much more* about the syntactic structure of [NP1 ["和" NP2]] phrases than ANY of the grammars I have seen, in particular 1) that they are 'endocentric', 2) that their head is "和", 3) that NP2 is the 'complement' of "和", and 4) that NP1 is the 'specifier' of "和". All that would make [NP1 ["和" NP2]] phrases conform to universal patterns of phrase structure and may eventually prove correct, but it cannot be taken for granted without careful analysis.

That proposal has pro's and con's. 

Pro's: Two-place predicates are extremely common in languages. In fact, all transitive verbs and prepositions fit that description, and English "and" has also been analysed as a two-place function of sorts (e.g., by Richard S. Kayne and his followers); if "和" is 'at bottom' the semigrammaticalized reflex of an old verb meaning 'accompany' or 'follow', or 'be with', all two-place predicates 'selecting' NPs, there would be nothing too strange about "和" selecting two NPs, as well. 

Con's: 1) it is necessary to prove that "和"  'projects' that kind of structure, going far beyond what grammars of Chinese say; 2) IF it does,  we must find some other explanation for the impossibility of extracting the  NPs (recall Skatinginbc's examples of 'Coordinate Structure Constraint'  effects in his #9 and my discussion thereof in #14), because BOTH complements and specifiers CAN be extracted; but even that  is not all: 3) since "和" can appear coordinating not only two, but ANY number of NPs, it will not be possible to argue that it is a *two-place* predicate; either we say that it is an *n-place* predicate and thereby break all analogy with _bona fide _two-place predicates like "follow", "be with" (or verbal "和") and make it impossible to generate according to general principles of phrase construction, or we claim that in a series [NP1, NP2, NP3...... "和" NPn] there is even MORE HIDDEN STRUCTURE than [...["和"....]]. What kind of 'hidden structure'?: unpronounced tokens of "和" each of which generates an [NP ["和" NP]] phrase that acts embedded as a specifier or complement of a larger [NP ["和" NP]] structure, which in its turn occupies the specifier or complement position of yet another [NP ["和" NP]] structure, and so on, recursively, until all the NPs coordinated in a series ending in ".... "和" NP" can be properly accommodated as complements or specifiers of [NP ["和" NP]]'s projected by the hidden, as well as the overt, token of "和". 

Establishing  all that and solving the derived problems that arise is a lot, but we  are not done yet: we still have to accommodate the semantics of such long  coordinate series, no trivial matter. Deriving their semantic effects  from the operation of a set operator that combines two individuals into a  'pair' covers only the simplest case, the conjoined NPs of examples  like "John and Mary make a handsome couple". Since that, however,  inevitably leads to matters that Yangmuye has addressed but I have not yet had time to reply to, I'd better put them aside until I can  properly acknowledge his long and generous contribution.


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## Skatinginbc

Sibutlasi said:


> Obviously, the  presence of "都"   will block the one-proposition interpretation of  "Tom and Mary  married" (as that of "both" does in English), but the mere  presence of  "和" does *not* (just as mere presence of  "and", without  "both", leaves open which of the two interpretations of  "Tom and Mary  married" is intended in a particular context).


Ablak 和 Burak  结婚了 ==> There is no ambiguity: "Ablak married Burak ".  Wait, both  Ablak and Burak are male.  It is the information context, not syntax,  that triggers ambiguity and forces the listener to consider the  possibility of a missing 都.
 Ablak 和 Burak 在彈鋼琴  ==> There is no ambiguity: "Ablakk and Burak are playing the piano  (together)".  Wait, they are in fact playing separately in different  rooms--This context, not syntax, forces the listener to conclude there  is a missing 都.
Ablak 和 Burak 在吃飯  ==> There is no ambiguity: "Both Ablak and Burak are eating (most likely together)".  Wait, they are in fact eating separately in different  places.  The speaker meant to indicate two separate events--This context, not syntax, forces the listener to conclude there  is a missing 都.
我朋友和我学习外语 "wo3 peng2you he2 wo3 xue2xi wai4yu3" ==> Normally there should be no ambiguity: As SuperXW already stated, "when a Chinese say 'wo3 peng2you he2 wo3 xue2xi wai4yu3', what they really emphasize is:  'My friend is studying foreign language WITH me.'" (see Post #4).  The  ambiguity comes from the information context--Sibutlasi already told us  from the start that 我朋友和我学习外语 was intended to mean 我朋友和我都学习外语.  We knew there was a missing 都. 

Restoration of 都 actually happens in my brain when I hear a two-place propositional sentence that does not have a 都.


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## YangMuye

The traditional use of 和 is to group things into two groups (It may be said by 王力, but I don't remember). 和 doesn't have to come at last, but it's common to put it before the last item.
They are wired situations I don't even know how to express with 和. e.g. 


> 我 姐姐 姐夫 妹妹 妹夫 结婚了。


Where will you put 和, *Skatinginbc* ? You can change the order of the words, or use different conjunctions (e.g. 姐姐和妹妹 跟 姐夫和妹夫) at the same time.

Analyzing grammaticalizing expressions is even more painful. You can always find more than two ways to parse the same sentence. e.g. the 给 involved in recent threads. I don't really think the ambiguity in superficial constructions is really important, though. In practice, there is often no ambiguity in semantics.


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## Skatinginbc

YangMuye said:


> 我 姐姐 姐夫 妹妹 妹夫 结婚了。


I did not understand that sentence immediately.  I had to think a while and guess what that sentence intends to say.  If you call someone 姐夫 or 妹夫, you already imply the happening of "marriage".  Why do we want to say 结婚了?  To make that sentence meaningful to me, can I change it to 结婚好多年了?  In that case, I would say 我 姐姐和姐夫, 妹妹和妹夫 都结婚好多年了. ==> The 和...都 structure is rendered as ",...都" (that is, the comma or the short pause actually reflects the missing 和 that is part of the 和...都 structure).  The two 和s that show up in the surface structure is the regular 和 that "forms a new entity" (that is, 姐姐和姐夫 forms a new entity, 妹妹和妹夫 another entity).


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## YangMuye

Skatinginbc said:


> I did not understand that sentence immediately.  I had to think a while and guess what that sentence intends to say.  If you call someone 姐夫 or 妹夫, you already imply the happening of "marriage".  Why do we want to say 结婚了?  To make that sentence meaningful to me, can I change it to 结婚好多年了?


  But when you say that, they've already got married, isn't it?



Skatinginbc said:


> In that case, I would say 我 姐姐和姐夫, 妹妹和妹夫 都结婚好多年了. ==> The 和...都 structure is rendered as ",...都" (that is, the comma or the short pause actually reflects the missing 和 that is part of the 和...都 structure).  The two 和s that show up in the surface structure is the regular 和 that "forms a new entity" (that is, 姐姐和姐夫 forms a new entity, 妹妹和妹夫 another entity).


That sounds fine, because the context is clear. Actually, I would simply say 我 姐姐 和 妹妹 都结婚了 in this situation.
If only names are used, e.g. 张三(male) 李四(female) 王五(male)  赵六(female) 结婚了, no matter how I try, they will sound strange. I might say 张三 王五 和 李四  赵六 结婚了, 张三 王五 和 李四 赵六 他们两对(都) 结婚了 or 张三 李四 和 王五 赵六 都结婚了, but it's still a little strange.

I think most Chinese speaker will avoid such expressions by using two sentences instead.


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## Skatinginbc

YangMuye said:


> But when you say that, they've already got married, isn't it?


Yes, but adding a temporal phrase can switch the focus from simply "married" (which is old information as implied by the terms 姐夫 and 妹夫) to the length of marriage (which is new information).  Without conveying new information, I really don't get the purpose of the utterance. 

张三, 李四, 王五, and 赵六 all sound like male names.  Will it sound strange if I say 张三和阿香, 王五和阿梅 都结婚好多年了?


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## YangMuye

Skatinginbc said:


> Yes, but adding a temporal phrase can switch the focus from simply "married" (which is old information as implied by the terms 姐夫 and 妹夫) to the length of marriage (which is new information).  Without conveying new information, I really don't get the purpose of the utterance.


I think I may use this expression when the listener know they are going to get married. The new information is that they've just held the ceremony. Maybe it's just regional usage. I will not feel strange to call someone 姐夫 or 嫂子 even they haven't been legally recognized as being married.



Skatinginbc said:


> 张三, 李四, 王五, and 赵六 all sound like male names.  Will it sound strange if I say 张三和阿香, 王五和阿梅 都结婚好多年了?


I think it's acceptable. Even 张三王五 和 阿香阿梅 结婚了 seems acceptable. But I just won't use them.


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## Skatinginbc

我最近压力大，吃饭和睡觉都不安稳 (= 吃饭不安稳 + 睡觉不安稳)
我最近压力大，吃饭、睡觉都不安稳   (= 吃饭不安稳 + 睡觉不安稳)
*我最近压力大，吃饭和睡觉不安稳 (unidiomatic)

賭博和吸毒害了他一生(賭博 plus 吸毒; 賭博 together with 吸毒)
賭博、吸毒害了他一生 ((賭博 plus 吸毒)
*賭博和吸毒都害了他一生 (unidiomatic)



Sibutlasi said:


> the addition of the adverb "都",   with its requirement of a dual/plural NP to its left


Examples of Singular NP + 都: 
整个地球都被污染了
哪一个旅馆都無所謂, 只要能住就行了


Sibutlasi said:


> "和...都", is not parallel to English "both...and", nor  a "fixed correlative conjunction" (just as English "...and...all"..." is not)


Chinese "和...都"  may look like English "and...all", but they behave quite differently in terms of  syntactic dependency.  For instance, their co-occurrence distributions  are significantly different.   Google results: 
"和我都":  702,000,000
和: 1,530,000,000; 我: 1,510,000,000; 都:1,160,000,000; Average: 1,400,000,000
Relative frequency of "和我都": 702,000,000 ÷ 1,400,000,000 = 0.501429 
"_and I all_" + "_and I both_": 29,700,000 + 85,800,000 = 115,500,000
"_and_": 7,520,000,000; "_I_":  6,570,000,000; "_all_" + "_both_": 6,530,000,000 + 787,000,000 = 7,317,000,000; Average: 7,135,666,666
Relative frequency of ("_and I all_" + "_and I both_"): 115,500,000 ÷ 7,135,666,666 = 0.016186
"和我都" ÷ ("_and I all_" + "_and I both_") = 0.501429 ÷ 0.016186 = 30.98
==> The co-dependency between 和 and 都 is much stronger than that between "_and_" and "_all_/_both_"--30.98 times stronger according to my rough, preliminary estimate, which is likely underestimated because 我 usually goes first (i.e., preceding 和) whereas "_I_" usually goes last (i.e., following "_and_") in a string of nouns joined by a coordinator.  


Sibutlasi said:


> Yangmuye's example 他大儿子和二儿子结婚了shows that the ABSENCE of "都"  does NOT disable the [NP [Coord+NP]] analysis


To me, the absence of "都" precludes the multi-proposition interpretation.  It is the information  context (e.g., 大儿子 and 二儿子, both being male and blood-related) that  re-enables that interpretation.  The disabling on one hand and re-enabling on the other may momentarily confuse the listeners (at least me). 



Sibutlasi said:


> 1) that they are 'endocentric', 2) that their head is "和", 3) that NP2 is the 'complement' of "和", and 4) that NP1 is the 'specifier' of "和". All that would make [NP1 ["和" NP2]] phrases conform to universal patterns of phrase structure and may eventually prove correct


 
Treating the coordinator 和 as  the head in [xp[specifier X'[X compl.]]] does not sound intuitively  attractive.  Do sentences like "吃饭、睡觉都不安稳" and  "大儿子、二儿子都结婚了" have a missing head?  Are you suggesting an asymmetric conjunction analysis, which goes against native speakers' intuitions?


Sibutlasi said:


> if "和"  is 'at bottom' the semigrammaticalized reflex of an old verb meaning  'accompany' or 'follow', or 'be with'...


和 originally means "to sing in harmony" (《說文解字》和, 相應也; 《诗经》倡予和女; 《老子》音声相和).


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## Sibutlasi

Reply to Yangmuye #10 [YangMuye;14128168]

YangMuye: “I initially wrote the reply when the thread started but didn't post it, because they might look "irrelevant".
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





But as there is already so much "irrelevant" information here, I decide to post it.”

_S: Let me first sincerely thank you for your reply and apologize for my delay in acknowledging it; I have been busy of late. You are right that this thread has grown with much irrelevant material, but I do not think I am to blame: I made it very clear in my initial post and even more so in #7 that I am trying to understand ‘why’ __和__ behaves as it does. 'How' it behaves, I more or less knew before posting. Most of the information you offer here is useful to a beginner like me, but irrelevant to the issue I raised. Since your post touches on many different things, I will refer mostly to the points which *you* think add to the explanation I demanded, but let me anticipate that they do not._

YangMuye: “和 is not logical operator AND
There are some difference between set operator AND and logical operator AND.”

_S: True, but I never said _和_ was identical, or even equivalent to “&”; (English “and” is not equivalent to “&”, either). All I said in #1, and more explicitly in #7, was that _和 *supports*_ interpretations that _*minimally*_ correspond to “&” in conjoined sentences, in spite of the additional ‘meanings’ that _和_ may have in _*other*_ cases. Note that “supports” does NOT mean ‘is identical to’. By ‘minimally’, cf. my #7, I meant that the actual interpretations speakers generate may add context-sensitive inferences such as those overtly expressed in English by “and then”, “and yet”, “therefore”, “with”, etc. Such ‘implicatures’, however, do not belong to the truth-conditional meaning of the sentence. Leaving that aside, it is trivial to distinguish the logical operator “&” from the set union operator and this from the set-formation operator. The range of entities they operate on, for one thing, is different, propositions in one case and unrestricted individuals/sets in the other, and the nature of their effects is also different: the propositional “&” is a function of type <t <t, t>>; the set union operator just creates unrestricted sets of entities, however heterogeneous, and ‘deletes’ previous set boundaries, if any, as it adds their members to the resulting set; the set-formation operator creates sets of sets, i.e., the members of the resulting set are themselves sets and their boundaries are unaffected. Depending on how rich your ontology is, sets, and sets of sets, may be legitimate ‘entities’ or not, but only sets consisting of certain numbers of members of specific kinds (entities or sets, as determined by the corresponding predicates) are relevant to semantic rules._

YangMuye: “我和他 forms a new entity consist of two entities 我 and 他.”

_S: Trivially true about ‘syntactic’ entities (of course _我和他_is a syntactic NP) but false, in general, if you refer to, say, ‘meanings’ or ‘referents’. The referents of _我和他 _do or do not form a new ‘entity’ depending on the predicates that apply to the [NP1 [_和_ NP2]] structure. With predicates like “xue2xi wai4yu3”, “hui4 shuo1 de2yu3”, etc., the *only* ones under consideration here, ‘collective’ (‘group’, ‘single event’) readings are out of the question; the only ‘entities’ relevant to interpretation are D(“wo3 peng2you”) = ‘my friend(s)’ and D(“wo3”) = ‘I’. The reason I chose such examples is that they necessarily trigger ‘distributive’ (‘multiple-event’) readings and, to that extent, are *minimally* equivalent (at the semantic level) to conjoined propositional structures. I leave aside here the ontological issues raised by your claim that an ‘entity’ consists of two entities; from a ‘realist’ perspective, at least, the referent of _我和他_ cannot be an ‘entity’, but you need not be a ‘realist’; if you are not, you can always argue that human languages generate their own ontology, which includes e.g., pairs, pluralities, sets of pluralities… etc., a view I sympathize with for cases like “John and Mary are a nice couple”, etc., but such a move requires explaining, first, how surface linguistic expressions relate to such ‘linguistic entities’, and then how such linguistic entities relate to ‘real entities’. Anyway, since cases like “John and Mary are a handsome couple” (etc.) require non-distributive readings, something has to be done about it, and positing ‘linguistic entities’ like ‘couples’ is probably inevitable (see Lasersohn’s “Plurality, Conjunction and Events”, Kluwer 1995, for an informative account of what else people have done about that), but that problem does _*not*_ arise in the cases we are considering. _

YangMuye: “高且帅 forms a new proposition, which is true iif both proposition 高 and 帅 are true.”

_S: [Irrelevant to our issue, but neither _高 _nor _帅 _is a ‘proposition’; they are ‘predicates’. Until you claim that an ‘entity’ (a ‘subject’) ‘e’ belongs to the set _高_ or _帅 _or both at time “t” in world “w”, etc. there is no ‘proposition’. Or are you representing propositions by their predicates?]_

YangMuye: “We must also see that some words can be used to connect verbs, adjectives, <…> while some can be used to connect nouns <…>”

_S: That is what must be explained, but let’s ignore all cases except [NP1…& NPn ≥2] and [S1 … & Sn≥2]. If your ontology allows for ‘groups’, or even higher-order sets, then ‘generalized conjunction’ handles _*both*_. Some kind of ‘and’ (obviously, *not* the <t<t, t>> function) is necessary, but not several, contrary to what happens in Mandarin at ‘surface level’. That makes an explanation of the behavior of _和_ even more necessary._

YangMuye: “<...> Verbs: 高*且*大, high *and* huge, <…>,∀x.High(x)∧Huge(x)"

_S: [Irrelevant here, but “high *and* huge” cannot be represented as “__∀__x.High(x)__∧__Huge(x)”__ = ‘every entity in the universe is high and huge’. Since ‘high and huge’ is just a conjoined first-order predicate, what you need is the _*function*_ [__λ__x. x__ϵ__e.High(x)&Huge(x)]]_.

YangMuye: “<….>我*和*他是学生 -- ∀x∈{I, he}:Student(x) ; 我*或*他是学生 -- ∃x∈{I, he}:Student(x)”

_S: [Again, irrelevant to the issue, but your logical formulae seem just a perverse way of avoiding the standard ‘X(w) & X(t)’ (where ‘X’ = __学生__, ‘w’= __我__, and ‘t’ = _他_).] I say “perverse” because __我__ and _他_ name specific individuals and _*must *_be represented by logical _*constants*_, not variables. Converting ‘x’ into a restricted variable by adding the restrictor ‘x__∈__{I,__ he}’ is otiose, I think, because “I” and “he” will have to be logical constants anyway. Your approach is also perverse in a more important respect: you are generalizing the single-event reading to cases in which it is obviously unacceptable in an attempt to beg the question: IF _*和*_ necessarily induced collective interpretations, why it cannot conjoin sentences would be obvious, but that claim, the gist of your explanation *if* it were true, is *not true*._

YangMuye: “Whichever type of conjunction you use, 和 or 或, it will not make much difference. <…> in Chinese, in many cases, they are interchangeable <…>”

_S: Your examples offer new facts, thank you, but nothing else. What matters is that such ‘connectors’ are _*not* *generally*_ interchangeable, and in the examples under discussion here they are not. _

YangMuye: “The result <…> is often that you can expand the original proposition to several one joined by logical "AND" or "OR"<...> It doesn't mean that these resulted logical "AND" or "OR" are the same as or should be mapped back to the set operators<...>.”

_S: As explained, union/set formation operators cannot be interchangeable with two-place propositional functions, but “learn foreign languages”, “speak German”, etc. are first-order predicates *not* predicable of ‘pairs’. Why, then, _*和*_cannot conjoin the equivalent propositions remains unexplained._

YangMuye: “They must be different otherwise you can explain sentences like我和他是朋友=我们是朋友, <…>. 我是朋友 doesn't make sense.”

_S: I never questioned that certain predicates must apply to ‘pairs’. Yet, that is irrelevant: I deliberately excluded such examples from the start._

YangMuye: “Moreover, 和 or 或 is not really needed when you are listing three or more items. <…>.”

_S: Thanks, but the new facts add nothing; your “Moreover” is a rhetorical trick: you have not yet offered any explanation; your new facts do not change that._

YangMuye: “2. <…> most conjunctions are need for their conversational function, rather than logical implementation. <…> all statements you say are naturally joined by the logic operator AND. You don't really need AND to connect them. <...>.”

_S: If what you mean is that languages may dispense with an overt manifestation of “and” in many (not all!) cases, that is true (cf. my 7#), but, again, irrelevant._

YangMuye: “In fact, you never use "and" and "or" in purely logical sense<…>”

_S: In real usage this may be correct, but I never identified “and” with “&”= <t,<t, t>>. _

YangMuye: “3. <...> 我和他 might have originally mean something like "I accompanied by him" <...> 和 can be ambiguous. It can be either a preposition or a conjunction<...>”

_S: Thanks for the facts, but, as explained, cases in which [_和 _NP] is *not* part of a conjoined subject are irrelevant to the present issue._


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## Sibutlasi

Partial reply 1 to Skatinginbc #24; [14159686]

  Due to the 10.000 character length limit, I must break my answer into several installments, I'm sorry. This is the first installment.

I interpret your first two examples as showing that in [XP ...... [Coord.  XP]]'s, provided the adverb 都 follows, 和 may be 'dropped' (= replaced by comma and half-rising intonation), without endangering the two/multi-propositional reading. If so, that is as expected. However, do you also mean that *我最近压力大，吃饭和睡觉不安稳 is 'unidiomatic' because 都is absent? How do we know that it is absent _tout court_ rather than 'present' at some deep level but unrealized at PF? [Recall that in earlier posts you claimed 都may be ‘there’ but unpronounced; in your #18, for example, you wrote: “Restoration of 都 actually happens in my brain when I hear a two-place propositional sentence that does not have a 都”; however, whereas an unpronounced 和 leaves sufficient proof of its being there (the comma, the half-rising intonation), an unpronounced 都 leaves nothing behind, so I still fail to see how it can be postulated or distinguished from plain absence of 都]. As to why *賭博和吸毒都害了他一生 should be ‘unidiomatic’ I assume that都 enforces a ‘distributive’ reading that is incompatible with the ‘pair’ reading that 和induces, which seems more plausible here (i.e., that it is only the joint effect of gambling and drug abuse that has ruined his life). If so, that, too, is as expected. Is there anything else? 


Skatinginbc: "Examples of Singular NP + 都: 整个地球都被污染了; 哪一个旅馆都無所謂, 只要能住就行了"

Sibutlasi: I know that 都 may be preceded by non-dual/plural NPs, too. I left such cases aside because they do not have conjoined NP structure and cannot trigger the one/two event ambiguities conjoined NPs may induce. Note, however, that that都is also probably a different homonymous lexical item, one similar to English adverbs like “entirely”, “completely”, rather than to English “all”.

<....> 

[In reply to my earlier observation that, as Yangmuye’s example  他大儿子和二儿子结婚了shows, the ABSENCE of都does not disable the [NP[Coord+NP]] analysis, or any of its interpretations] Skatinginbc: “To me, the absence of "都" precludes the multi-proposition interpretation. It is the information context <…> that re-enables that interpretation. The disabling on one hand and re-enabling on the other may momentarily consfuse the listeners (at least me).”  

Sibutlasi: OK, perhaps YangMuye and you have somewhat different intuitions in that respect, I will keep that in mind, but note that disabling+re-enabling an interpretation finally amounts to *enabling* the interpretation, .

<...>

Skatinginbc: "和originally means "to sing in harmony"<...>"

Sibutlasi: That’s a beautiful etymology for a coordinator to have, Thank you!


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## Sibutlasi

Partial reply 2 to Skatinginbc #24; [14159686]: Second installment, 

  Skatinginbc: Chinese "和...都" may look like English "and...all", but they behave quite differently in terms of syntactic dependency. For instance, their co-occurrence distributions are significantly different. <…> The co-dependency between 和 and 都 is much stronger than that between "_and_" and "_all_/_both_"--30.98 times stronger according to my rough, preliminary estimate, <…>

Sibutlasi: Well, either I did not express myself clearly enough or you misunderstood me, because it never crossed my mind to establish *any *sort of parallelism between 和...都 and English “and… all”. Let me quote myself in #16: “That shows that "和...都", is *not* parallel to English "both...and", *nor* a "fixed correlative conjunction" (just as English "...and...all"..." is *not*);” (emphasis added here).


  If you want me to explain that further, I can. To start with, "and ... all" is *nothing* in English. Of course, you can find discontinuous strings containing "and …all" if you search for them (just as you can find “the …the”, “the…withdrew”, “not…because”, and what not), but mere co-occurrence, however frequent, does not entail existence of any syntactic or semantic relation between the co-occurring items. In this case, there is no *syntactic/semantic *dependency whatsoever between "and" and "all", they are not constituents of any discontinuous category, and so, from a grammarian’s point of view, corpus searches and statistical computations like those you have carried out are completely meaningless. [Of course, I do not mean that the computational study of collocations and co-occurrences is useless in general; it is very useful in other respects].


  There is, indeed, an obvious syntactic-semantic relation involved between English plural or conjoined NPs and the ‘floating quantifier’ “all” that may follow them, which is why, in view of pairs like “*All* the students have passed the test” and “The students have *all* passed the test”, we say that “all” is a quantifier (of “All the students”) that may ‘float’ away from its canonical position preceding the plural/conjoined NP and appear somewhere nearer the main VP.  On the contrary, there is NO syntactic-semantic relation whatsoever between the “and” of conjoined NPs and the floating “all”, and so considering “and…all” as a ‘discontinuous’ syntactic  element (a ‘fixed correlative conjunction’, as you put it) is out of the question. Of course, “and” is always involved in the construction of conjoined NPs constructible with the ‘plural’ quantifier “all”, but only in the sense in which a determiner like “the” IS necessarily involved in the construction of a common subject compatible with e.g. “is an anorexic” (cf. “*girl is an anorexic”), or in the sense “the” and a plural number morpheme, or an “and”  are ‘involved’ in the construction of a subject appropriate to a predicate like “jointly launched a new OS”, etc. No grammarian in his senses would try to establish discontinuous syntactic/semantic constituents like “the…is”, “the…-s…jointly”, or “and…jointly”. 


  In Chinese, the existence of your would-be ‘fixed correlative conjunction 和...都 is just as untenable. In particular, in cases like “wo3和wo3 peng2you xian4zai4都xue2xi wai4yu3”, or “da4xue2sheng xian4zai4都xue2xi ying1yu3” (I introduce “xian4zai4” to create a small discontinuity between the subject NPs and 都; replace it if it is inadequate) it is even clearer that there is NO ‘discontinuous’ ‘fixed correlative coordinator’ 和…都, because 都 is NOT even a quantifier (hence, cannot be a one that has floated away from a NP to its left). Even though, after such subjects, 都 would have to be translated into English as “both” or “all”, respectively, which, in English, ARE quantifiers and CAN float away (others, e.g., “many”, “few”, cannot), Chinese 都 is an adverb, not a quantifier. Note that 都 is compatible with subjects that already contain their own quantifier (e.g., “xu3duo1….dou1….”); if it were a (floating) Q, it would NOT be, because no two Qs can bind the same variable (the ‘x’ argument in *[xu3duo1x] [dou1x] [Da4xue2sheng(x)…..]  (order/scope of the Qs does not matter; the formula is ill-formed anyway). 

There is another major difference between Chinese 都 and English Q “all”: English “all” can only ‘float away’ from a plural subject; it cannot be associated with an object or any other non-subject constituent, even if it is ‘topicalized’ and physically precedes it. For example, “Young boys all find Dan Brown’s books very interesting” (with ‘Q-float’) is truth-conditionally equivalent to “All young boys find Dan Brown’s books very interesting” (without Q-float), to “Dan Brown’s books, all young boys find __ very interesting” (with Q ‘in situ’ and object as topic), or to “Dan Brown’s books, __young boys all find __ very interesting” (with both Q-float and object topicalization), but is NOT equivalent to “Young boys find all Dan Brown’s books very interesting” (where “all” belongs to the object in situ), nor to “All Dan Brown’s books, young boys find __ very interesting” (where “all” is also associated with the topicalized object). On the contrary, the preceding dual/plural/conjoined NP that Chinese 都 requires may be a subject, a topicalized object, or an adverbial NP, and 都 may even be associated to BOTH! a subject and an object, as in “zhei4xie hai2zi wo3men dou1 xi3huan1”, cf. Li & Thompson, Mandarin Chinese. A Functional Reference Grammar, p. 336. In the case of English "all", of course, that is unthinkable (actually, impossible by virtue of the bi-uniqueness condition on quantifier-variable binding already explained above).



In sum, it follows from 'compositionality' that there may be ‘interactions’ between 和 and都, as almost between any two co-present constituents you care to consider within a sentence (or even within a larger text), but that is all. And, of course, there is no parallelism between 和 and "both" (or between 都 and “all”, as already explained):  English “both” is a quantifying determiner, not a coordinating conjunction, it ‘selects’ single dual NPs or conjoined [XP and XP] structures, it may start a NP, it may appear without any phonetically visible NP or [ __ and __] 'complement', and it is incompatible with another ('floating') Q (cf. "*Both girls have *all obtained PhD degrees"; "*Both Jane and Jill have *all obtained PhD degrees."), whereas  Chinese 和 has the opposite properties in *all* those respects:  it is not a quantifier, it cannot ‘start’ a NP, it cannot appear on its own, it cannot take just one dual/plural NP complement, it need not be followed by a ‘dual’ or conjoined NP, and it is compatible with a preceding quantifier, as well as with the adverb  都 in its = ‘all’ sense. 

To your question about the structure of coordination I will reply in my next installment.


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## Skatinginbc

Sibutlasi said:


> cases in which [和 NP] is not part of a conjoined subject are irrelevant to the present issue.


That  和 has been a preposition since Tang Dynasty and that many of the 和  constructions are halfway between CP and PP (Note: some Chinese  linguistics even call it 「连介词」) has something to  do with your question: Why can't 和 join sentences?  A preposition  usually takes nouns as its complements, whether be they noun phrases,  noun clauses, or gerunds/infinitives that function as nouns.  English  "as well as" is a prepositional phrase.  When it serves as a  conjunction, it has its unique properties and restrictions, and so does 和  (e.g., *He is rich, as well as he lives in Chicago. *他有钱 和 他住在芝加哥).  In  addition, Chinese is a verb-serializing language where predicates are  often put together without a conjunction (e.g.,他翻脸无情 literally "He suddenly turn hostile, shows no affection") and a topic-prominent language where  independent clauses are often linked by a shared topic rather than by a  conjunction (e.g., 我最近压力大，吃饭睡觉都不安稳 = 我最近压力大 + 我吃饭睡觉都不安稳 with the shared topic "我").  Linking them with an overt conjunction is reserved for a need to express something  (e.g., contrast, condition, etc.) more than just the logical "&".


Sibutlasi said:


> 都 is   also probably a different homonymous lexical item, one similar to   English adverbs like “entirely”, “completely”, rather than to English   “all”.


Translating 都 or its equivalents in "和...都/皆/均" as "entirely, completely" or "all/both" leaves out an   important connotation, namely, "in a parallel way 均", and thus would make 都 in 完全都, 全部都, 整个都, 統統都, 所有...都, or 倆都 look like redundancy.   Obviously, 都 is there for a reason, not so much as to convey  the sense  of "altogether" as to mark  multi-propositional function or so-called  「並連」  "parallel connection", even if those  propositions involve the  hypothetical constituents of its  referent (e.g., 整个地球都被污染了).  Why does  this function need to be marked?  Can't 和 alone be  enough?  Well, 和 can be a preposition as well as a  conjunction with various  functions including 「合連」"joint connection" (e.g., 你和他是一對), which is  unmarked.  Sentences like 我和他都分手了 ("I'm separated; he's separated") and 我和他分手了 ("He and I separated") mean quite differently.  都 is often a   necessity in parallel-connection constructions even when no ambiguity is involved   (e.g., google results: 5 for 我和他是学生 vs. 12,200,000 for 我和他都是学生).  The   habit of marking "parallel connection" has existed for over two   thousand years (e.g., 《漢書》凡有爵者與七十者與未齓者皆不爲奴" Those that bear a royal title, those that are 70 or above, and   those that have not yet lost their baby teeth shall not be enslaved.")  


Sibutlasi said:


> jointly


I would like to point out that 都  is NOT desired for "joint connection"合連 (e.g., My wife and I jointly own a house *我和我妻子*都*共同拥有一个房子).  Joint-connection structures share the following properties that violate constraints associated with a coordinating conjunction: 
1. Insertion Test: An adjunct can be inserted between the assumed conjuncts ==> 你天生和他是一對; 我一直和我妻子共同拥有一个房子. 
2. Extraction test: A whole conjunct can be moved out of the assumed coordinate structure ==> 和他是一對的那个人; 和我妻子共同拥有一个房子的人. 


Sibutlasi said:


> Chinese 都 is an adverb...like “entirely”, “completely”


I also would like to point out the difference between 你的话并不都对 (where 都 modifies 对 ==> 都对 "completely correct") and 我和你都不对 (where 都 refers back to 我和你).  The 都 in 和...都 constructions that we are interested in has a closer tie to the subject/topic than to the verb (c.f. *大儿子和二儿子不都结婚了 vs. 大儿子和二儿子都不结婚了; *任凭把我怎樣，我不都怨 vs. 任凭把我怎樣，我都不怨).  One either got married or did not get married.  What in the world is "completely get married" in *大儿子和二儿子不都结婚了?  Obviously, 都 in 大儿子和二儿子都结婚了 does not modify the verb.

To sump up, an unmarked 和 acts as a preposition or a pseudo-conjunction in joint-connection constructions.  Since an unmarked 和 (a default case) is not a true coordinator, it cannot conjoin sentences.


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## Sibutlasi

[Partial reply to Skatinginbc;14159686] 3rd. installment


  This is my short answer to the issues you raise about the structure of coordinate phrases:

  Skatinginbc: “Treating the coordinator 和as the head in [xp[specifier X'[X compl.]]] does not sound intuitively attractive.”

  Sibutlasi: I agree, but we need more than intuition to discard that possibility. 


  Skatinginbc: “Do sentences like "吃饭、睡觉都不安稳" and "大儿子、二儿子都结婚了" have a missing head?”

  Sibutlasi:  Perhaps not in the X-bar sense of ‘head’, but such ‘null’和coordinators (well, relatively ‘null’ ones: the intonation is ‘visible’ at PF, and so is the comma in the written representation), might be (functional) heads of their respective coordinates, if not of the whole NPs.


  Skatinginbc: “Are you suggesting an asymmetric conjunction analysis, which goes against native speakers' intuitions?”

  Sibutlasi: I’m not sure what you mean by “an asymmetric conjunction analysis”, but If you are thinking of Kayne’s ‘antisymmetric’ approach, the answer is “no”. What little Kayne says about coordinated phrases is just an ‘embryo’ of a theory of coordination that raises more problems than it solves and is not remotely comparable in adequacy to many earlier TGG and GPSG/HPSG analyses by generativists and other formal linguists and semanticists. 

  The only reason why I referred to Kayne’s intuition is that, as far as I know, it was the first attempt to make coordination conform to X-bar theory and the minimalist ‘Merge’-based approach, in particular by analyzing coordinate expressions as ‘headed’ (= endocentric) constructions, and coordinators as their heads. Non-endocentric (or polycentric) coordinate phrases had long been an embarrassment to Chomskyan theories of syntax and, so, at the time, Kayne’s ‘solution’ was received with some relief.

  I had to refer to some theory in which coordinators were heads in order to reduce the ‘brute fact’ approach illustrated in SuperXW’s answer - and in all the grammars I have seen, by the way (= approximately:  “We just have different coordinators for different kinds of phrases; “和” conjoins NPs, but not sentences. Why are you surprised?”) to something less arbitrary, and more in tune with the systematic character of the rest of the grammar. Obviously, the existence of ‘selective coordinators’ is more palatable if coordinators literally ‘select’ what they coordinate, and ‘selection’ is an aspect of grammar that Chomskyan linguistics has been especially careful and successful with (although other approaches have subsequently adopted similar ideas, of course). Thus, if “和” is, indeed, a ‘selective’ coordinator, it must also be a head, and, if so, what it coordinates must be its complements or specifiers (under traditional X-bar approaches or current Merge-based ones; ‘complements’ in other theories). 

  Under Kayne's analysis, in the simplest case, an [NP1 [和NP2]] structure, NP1 is a specifier and NP2 is a complement; in more complex cases like [NP1 (和) NP2 (和) NP3…和 NPn], either 和‘raises’ into higher functional heads to make room for more NPs (which would be higher specifiers), as suggested in [NP1 [和 [NP2 [和 NP3 .. [和NPn]]]], or some of the NPs are ‘grouped’, some may not be, and what we have is coordinated NP structures, rather than simple NPs, filling some of the complements or specifiers of successive copies of 和. And we may have both, of course. Recall that our rules must also allow for cases like “We must invite John, Bill and Edna, Ted and Harry, Sam, Charlie and Peggy, Dan and Claire and their son, and Susan and her daughters” (!), where the explicit "ands" are crucial to mark internal groupings. 

  Such examples can in principle be generated by a theory like Kayne’s, but, needless to say, LOTS of loose ends remain, and, to tell you the truth, I do not know whether subsequent research has really tied them up or not. For example, essential details like what ‘adicity’ and ‘selection’ properties coordinating heads (say, our和) have, how to guarantee the assignment/checking of Case in each of the coordinate NPs, how to ‘distribute’ the same (and unique!) Theta Role that an external verb (adjective, preposition) assigns in order to attribute it to all the coordinate NPs without violating the ‘Theta Criterion’, how to make the right copies of 和 be ‘null’ or not at PF, how to obtain the good effects of the Coordinate Structure Constraint within a theory in which both complements and specifiers CAN be extracted, how to preserve the benefits of the Law of Coordination of Likes – in the appropriate sense of 'Likes' -, i.e., so that cases like “Edward is handsome, a good father and husband, and from an aristocratic Scottish family”  are NOT forbidden, how to compute the cardinality of each n-links-long coordinate NP series in order to allow for “John, Bill, Carl and Don have been dating Edna, Fay, Gaby and Helen, respectively” while blocking “*J, B and C have been dating E, F, G and H, respectively”, etc., etc. 

  My impression is that many of those ‘loose ends’ still remain loose, because minimalist theory has not been particularly concerned with empirical adequacy, but I must confess that I have not been reading much about coordination of late. Perhaps some of those ‘technical’ issues have already been fixed. My reaction to Kayne’s proposal twenty years ago, anyway, was “well, good try, but this, as it stands, is not nearly as empirically adequate as it should to merit serious consideration”, and since then I have not read any derived analysis that really solved such technical problems, which had been noted, and sometimes solved, in previous work. By 1993, I myself had 'solutions' for some, although not for all, and fragments of an alternative theory, but not an integrated theory, at leat not one that could fit in the rest of current minimalist grammar.

  Nevertheless, this is not the place to discuss coordination in full. To return to the thread's issue, coordination is such a basic aspect of linguistic economy, and so pervasive a phenomenon, that it is logical to assume as a ‘zero hypothesis’ a unique ‘generalized coordination’ device, rather than a set of ‘selective coordinators’, which, at bottom, are just exceptions in need of an explanation. That’s what my question was about, of course: I posted in the hope that somebody could offer good reasons for the existence of one of such exceptions, the curious behavior of Chinese “和”. Needless to say, I would feel much happier if ‘selective coordinators’ could be entirely dispensed with. 

  Thanks for bearing with me so long.

  Regards,
  S.


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## Skatinginbc

Sibutlasi said:


> ‘null’和coordinators  (well, relatively ‘null’ ones: the intonation is ‘visible’ at PF, and  so is the comma in the written representation


I agree that some Chinese phrases contain empty conjunctions (e.g, 坐立不安), but I also believe that some are asyndetic, especially those that are in  joint-connection constructions (e.g., 张三、阿梅结婚了).  By the way, languages that  employ empty conjunctions tend to have  different  overt conjunctions for different syntactic categories (e.g., _hni_' for NPs and∅ for VPs/clauses in Cayuga; _poo_ for VPs and _go_ for clauses in Nguna; _ri_ for non-verbals, _a_ for VPs, and _ka_ for sentences in Sissala).


Sibutlasi said:


> ...a theory in which both complements and specifiers CAN be extracted...


Are we still talking about 和 ?  I think only the left branch or what you called "specifier" can be extracted. 
Functions of 和 in default (unmarked) cases:  
1) Preposition: 我和他聊天 (I with him have a chat) "I have a chat with him".  不/沒 can be inserted between NP1 and PP to form negatives (e.g., 我不和他聊天; 我沒和他聊天)--an indication that PP is part of the predicate.  An adjunct can be inserted (e.g., 我一直和他聊天).  Extraction of NP1 is also possible (e.g., 和他聊天的人).  我和他 (I with him) can be substituted with a pronoun (我們聊天 "We have a chat") as if 我和他 constitutes a phase: Merge (我, 和他) → {我, {我, 和他} }, with NP1 being the head.  This analysis is the precursor for its pseudo-conjunction function (e.g., 我和他沒聊天 ==> treating 我和他 together as the subject).
2) Pseudo-conjunction: Merge (NP1, 和NP2) → {NP1, {NP1, 和NP2}  }, with NP1 being the head, which according to the Phase  Impenetrability Condition is accessible to operations outside the  phase.  Thus extraction of NP1 is possible.  和NP2 does not occupy the left edge of the  phase and thus its movement is restricted.  Although an adjunct can be inserted, 不/沒 sometimes cannot (e.g., *我不和他是一對 vs. 我和他不是一對; ??*我不和他熟 vs. 我和他不熟).


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## elspru

I'm happy to learn about the beard top-level-clause conjunctive connective or 而.
Also, I'm wondering if there is something similar for disjunctions or "or" top level clause connectives.

I'm writing a programming language based on human languages, 
and I love the analytical aspects of chinese, since so many grammatical words are explicit.

English's use of "and" for conjoining top level clauses is actually very difficult to parse,
so I'm thinking of adding words to the english variant such as yand which correlate to the chinese 而.


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