Category Mismatches in Coordination Revisited

We re-examine cases of coordinated elements that do not match in syntactic category. We show that these fall into two types. The first type includes predicates and modifiers in the clausal domain, as well as such modifiers apparently coordinated with arguments. We argue that these do not actually involve coordination of unlike categories. The second type, which is our main concern, involves coordinated arguments of different categories. Unlike the first type, with coordinated arguments, non-initial conjuncts may violate selectional restrictions. To account for these violations, researchers have typically posited a special status for the first conjunct in a coordinate structure, such that it alone can determine the category of the coordinated phrase as a whole. We show that such accounts are untenable, for two reasons. First, the final conjunct can be what matters for selection, if it is closest to the selecting or selected element. Second, category mismatches are not free, but are extremely limited and ex...