1.1.

1 Adverb Phrase (AdvP)

Examples of Adverb Phrases (AdvPs) are given in (1). AdvPs frequently consist of nothing
more than an adverb, but may additionally contain optional degree expressions.AdvPs
sometimes contain PPs, cf. (1)b), but this is rare.
(1) a. (very) slowly, (extremely) well
b. (completely) independently of the approval of his superiors
The main uses of AdvPs are seen in (2). They are used in VPs, describing the situation named
by the verb. They are also used as degree expressions inside APs or other AdvPs.
(2) a. [S [NP Mary] [VP [AdvP quickly] memorised [NP the material] [AdvP perfectly]]]
b. [AP [AdvPvery/incredibly/mind-blowingly] cool]]
c. [AdvP [AdvPamazingly/very/somewhat] skilfully]]

2. Coordination
We can now give a fuller description of coordination, whichwe defined in section Error:
Reference source not found as the joining of constituents using conjunctions like and and or.
As a first approximation, we can say that coordination obeys the following two principles:
I. Coordination is generally possible only with constituents of the same category.
II. Coordination forms a constituent of the same category as the coordinated constituents.
Illustrations of this are given in (3). (For clarity’s sake,wegivethe simplest possible trees here.
More complex structuresarearguably needed,as noted inexercise3 andsection Error: Reference
source not found.)
(3) a. NP b. Adv

NP conj NP Adv conj Adv

I saw his mother and his father He worked slowly and carefully

c. ? d. ??

NP conj PP AdvP conj PP

?He is a criminal and in gaol *He played badly and on Friday

We see in(3)b) that there is no problem with coordinating individual words. (3)b) could
alternatively be written as two coordinated AdvPs. However, by principle II above we cannot
treat the expression as two individual adverbs which become an AdvP by coordination.
A complication regarding coordination is that sometimes parts of coordinated constituents
can undergo ellipsis (i.e. remain unpronounced) if they are identical to material in another
coordinated constituent. Thus, I read the paper and Mary a book clearly entails that Mary
read a book. If we assume that the second constituent is Mary read a book (with an elliptical,
i.e. unpronounced, verb), then we can assume that coordination involves two identical
constituents (here: two sentences) rather than assuming that the material after the conjunction
is not a constituent. Further examples of ellipsis are seen in exercise 2. The question as to
when ellipsis is (dis)allowed is too complex to treat in an introductory course, so we must
content ourselves with noting that it exists.

1. Which categories are coordinated by the underlined conjunctions in the sentences below.
a. A cleaner and a professor of physics recently got married.
b. She will sing and play a Beatles tune. [Two answers are possible.]
c. He went to the restaurant for a pie and chips but only had a glass of wine there.
d. Wewenttoa party, butthere was probably more happening at the graveyard.
 e. She held talks in Paris, London and several other European capital cities.
f. The film was completely and utterly boring and harmful to my mental landscape.
2. Try to find elliptical material in the following structures, and explain why thesestructures
would be hard to describe without using ellipsis.
a. Every man, woman and child sees that. (Also: Why does German disallow this?)
b. They sell pea and lentil soup. (This has two meanings, one of which involves ellipsis.)
c. Fred lived in Berlin for a year and Bob for three.
d. Quentin bought, and Cuthbert borrowed, a 600 page book about goldfish.
3. For simplicity’s sake, the trees in (3)useternary branching, i.e. three branches descend
from one node, suggesting that the two conjuncts and the conjunction are all combined at
once. This is actually surprising.The human mind canonly deal with two items at a time
when performing other mental processeslike arithmetic: a sum like 2+4+3 will be solved
in binary fashion, e.g. 2+4 = 6, then 6+3 = 9. This arguably applies to the mental process
of sentence construction.Some linguists argue that syntactic constituents are only ever
created by merging two items at once,and thus that the trees representing them only ever
usebinary branching. How might the following data be used as an argument that this
approach should be extended to coordination? (Some data are adapted from Progovac
2003.)
a. I bought jam, bread, etc. b. *I brought jam, bread and etc. 1

c. He left. And he didn’t say good bye. d. *He left and. He didn’t say goodbye.
e. I read a book today. And the paper. f. *I read a book and today. The paper.
g. And the people have spoken (article title) h.And I love her (Beatles song title)
4. Draw trees for the expressionsbelow. Use triangles for each coordinated constituent.
a. She seems very young and gifted. b. She read a book and went to bed.
c. You need a lawyer or notary. d. People sat outside and in the living room.

1The string *and etc. is excluded even for speakers who do not know that et cetera means ‘and the rest’ in Latin.
Thus, *and etc. is not excluded for the same trivial reasons as *and and the rest is excluded.