Chapter 3 - LOT publications

66 Reduplicative coordination constructions
(48) a. ?I can’t believe it! The government just puts off and puts off making any
decisions on the pension crisis
b. *The government put off making the decision intensively
A predicate like put off is punctual and thus not compatible with a durative reading.
For this reason an iterative reading is licensed. However, an adverb like ‘intensively’
also cannot typically modify a non-durative predicate. Consider the following
example with shoot.
(49) *John shot the rabbit intensively
This accounts for the ungrammaticality of (48b). Thus this example is not a counter
example at all.
To conclude, ReCo constructions denote durativity and intensiveness and consequently
only predicates (including particle verbs) which are compatible with both durativity
and intensiveness may be reduplicated. In some cases, where a punctual activity
like shoot is involved, then a serial reading is parasitic on the durative readings.
Having discussed some general properties of ReCo, it is now possible to place it
in its pseudo-coordinative context by systematically applying the tests developed in
chapter (2). In this chapter I will demonstrate that
i. ReCo is a pseudo-coordinative structure, i.e. that ReCo is not OCo and
ii. ReCo shares many properties of ConCo.
Because ReCo has not been analysed as pseudo-coordination before, I will first
focus on demonstrating that ReCo is not OCo. To this end, I will not necessarily retain
the tests in the order in which they were introduced in chapter (2). Tests that indicate
that ReCo is not an instance of OCo include the inability to substitute one coordinator
with another, the incompatibility of ReCo and distributive markers like both, the fact
that ReCo conforms to the Morphological Sameness Condition (99), the possibility
of non-ATB extraction and quantifier raising, and also the inability of a subject (or
indeed any XP) to occur in the second conjunct.
Other tests show that ReCo patterns with ConCo. These tests include the absolute
ban on XPs within the verbal string, the incompatibility of ReCo with partial VPdeletion,
semantic bleaching, and the fact that ReCo constructions allow quantifier
raising.
3.2.2 Coordinator substitution
A classic test for pseudo-coordination is whether or not the coordinator can be replaced
by another (section (2.1.6)). Whereas OCo allows such substitution, pseudocoordination
does not. The following examples can be compared with examples (29),
(30) and (31). They demonstrate unequivocally that ReCo structures do not allow coordinator
substitution and are thus indeed pseudo-coordinative structures.