Confusing Word Complexing With Group Embedding

Fawcett (2010: 264):

Occasionally we need to allow for embedding in co-ordinated structures, as in examples such as ten boys and girls (where ten quantifies both the boys and the girls). The linker and is attached to girls (for the reasons given above) and the two nominal groups of (1) boys and (2) and girls jointly fill the head of a higher nominal group whose quantifying determiner is ten.

One notable characteristic of co-ordination is that the semantic and syntactic similarities between two units often result in a partial syntactic parallelism — and that this in turn often leads to ellipsis. Thus, in The thieves have stolen our TV and drunk all my whisky, the two elements of they (and not, it should be noted, the thieves) and have have been ellipted from the second clause. Ellipsis in co-ordinated clauses can become quite complex, as in Ivy is going out with Paul and not Fred. Here, to provide an adequate analysis, we need to reconstruct the ellipted elements, as follows: Ivy is going out with Paul and (she is) not (going out with) Fred. It is often the presence of the Negator not or an Adjunct that alerts the analyst to the presence of an ellipted clause.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, in this instance, boys and girls is a ranking — not embedded — extending paratactic word complex realising the Thing/Head of a nominal group.

[2] To be clear, since this is clause rank ellipsis, it is an element of clause structure, the Mood element comprising Subject and Finite, that has been ellipsed in this instance:

On the basis of the first clause, the ellipsed Subject is the thieves, not they. Since the speaker did not select this personal reference item as the Subject of the first clause, it cannot be understood as the Subject of the second clause, without presuming a reference that was not actually made.

[3] The ellipsed Subject here is Ivy, not she; see [2] above.

[4] To be clear, a more reliable diagnostic of clause rank ellipsis is the absence of one or more Mood or Residue elements from clause structure.