Conjunction reduction and gapping in clause‐level coordination: an inheritance‐based approach
Gerard Kempen · Computational Intelligence · 1991
Three important contraction phenomena in clause-level coordination are backward conjunction reduction (BCR), forward conjunction reduction (FCR), and gapping.They are exemplified by sentences (1)-(3) respectively.(1) John stole ... and Peter bought a bike (2) John stole a bike and ... sold it immediately(3) John stole a bike and Peter . . .a car By substituting the italicized words for the ellipses, one obtains the non-contracted counterparts.It is generally recognized that these phenomena obey entirely different laws (e.g., see the literature surveys by Van Oirsouw (1987), Goodall (1987), and Pijls and Kempen (1986)), but the empirical evidence around them is so complex that no satisfactory linguistic analyses, let alone syntactic generation algorithms, have materialized.