serbo-croatian coordinative conjunctions at the syntax-semantics interface

Serbo-Croatian coordinative conjunctions at thesyntax-semantics interface

BOBAN ARSENIJEVIC

The Linguistic Review 28 (2011), 175–206 0167–6318/11/028-0175DOI 10.1515/tlir.2011.005 ©Walter de Gruyter

Abstract

In this paper, I present five major Serbo-Croatian conjunctions, and arguethat they differ in semantic as well as morphological complexity. I provide acompositional analysis of the morphological make-up of the arguably mor-phologically complex conjunctions, and establish a mapping between the twoscales of their complexity. I argue that the Serbo-Croatian i is the most prim-itive conjunction, involving a bare addition, without any special syntactic, se-mantic or information-structural constraints. All other analyzed conjunctions:the disjunctive ili, the negative ni, the oppositive a and the adversative ali aremore complex, they involve information-structural restrictions, and some ofthem also additional, polarity-related elements. For this reason, I argued thatthese other conjunctions are all restricted to coordinating bigger structuralunits: those rich enough to involve polarity- and information structure-relatedcomponents, or more precisely PolPs, MoodPs or CPs. Part of the analysis is anovel view at the syntactic and semantic properties of the Serbo-Croatian cliticli, defining it as an element that pairs up an unvalued polarity feature with afocal element in its scope. One consequence of the proposed analysis is a com-positional derivation of disjunctive coordination instead of taking disjunctionas a cognitive and linguistic primitive.

1. Coordinating conjunctions in Serbo-Croatian

Coordination cross-linguistically comes in different patterns of both the mor-phological build up of the conjunctions used and of their matching with thegenerally available semantic types of coordination, from conjunction (regular,negative, contrastive) to disjunction and adversative conjunction (Haspelmath2004). Serbo-Croatian (S-C) shows an interesting situation in both respects: it

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176 Boban Arsenijevic

has a rich set of conjunctions, marking different types of coordination, with amorphology that possibly reveals the underlying semantic structure of the typesof coordination realized with complex conjunctions.

In this paper, I present five major S-C conjunctions, and argue that theydiffer in semantic as well as morphological complexity. I provide a compo-sitional analysis of the morphological make-up of the arguably morphologi-cally complex conjunctions, and establish a mapping between the two scalesof their complexity. In addition to the grammatical analysis of the conjunc-tions, I tackle the questions of which syntactic categories may enter certaintypes of conjunction, as well as more general ones, such as what the conse-quences of the proposed analysis are in the domain of cognitive computationsof logical operations such as disjunction. The paper is organized as follows. Inthe current section, I present major asymmetries between the conjunctions inSerbo-Croatian, and Section 2 introduces the morphological primitives used inthe morphological analysis. Sections 3 through 6 discuss individual conjunc-tions, and Section 7 concludes.

The S-C coordination paradigm is presented in (1), with different conjunc-tions used for simple conjunction (1a), conjunction in a negative context (1b),disjunction (1c), oppositive adversative coordination (in further text oppositiveconjunction) (1d) and concessive adversative coordination (henceforth adver-sative conjunction) (1e).

(1) a. JovanJ

jeAux

kupiobought

loptuball

iand

krenuowent

dato

igraplay

fudbal.football

‘Jovan bought a ball and went/started to play football.’b. Jovan

JnijeNeg.Aux

kupiobought

loptuball

ninor

krenuowent

dato

igraplay

fudbal.football‘Jovan neither bought a ball nor went/started to play football.’

c. JovanJ

jeAux

dobiogot

batinebeaten

ilior

jeAux

paofallen

nizdown

stepenice.stairs‘Jovan got beaten or fell down the stairs.’

d. JovanJ

jeAux

uzeotaken

meso,meat

aand.Oppos

MarijaM

jeAux

odabralachosen

salatu.salad

‘Jovan took meat, and/while Marija chose salad.e. Jovan

JseRefl

okliznuo,slipped

alibut

nijeNeg.Aux

pao.fallen.

‘Jovan slipped, but didn’t fall.’



Serbo-Croatian coordinative conjunctions 177

Conjunctions i ‘and’, ni ‘neither/nor’ and ili ‘or’ are reduplicated, or multi-plied, in what is traditionally referred to as contrastive coordination, as in (2).

(2) a. JovanJ

jeAux

iand

kupiobought

loptuball

iand

krenuowent

dato

igraplay

fudbal.football‘Jovan both bought a ball and went/started to play football.’

b. JovanJ

nijeNeg.Aux

ninor

kupiobought

loptuball

ninor

krenuowent

dato

igraplay

fudbal.football‘Jovan neither bought a ball nor went/started to play football.’

c. JovanJ

jeAux

ilior

dobiogot

batinebeaten

ilior

jeAux

paofallen

nizdown

stepenice.stairs‘Jovan either got beaten or fell down the stairs.’

From a purely (morpho-)phonological point of view, all five different con-junctions: i, ni, ili, a and ali can be seen as based on four primitive elements:i, n, li and a (i, n+i, i+li, a and a+li), all four with an independent status ofmorphemes in the lexicon. Is this just a (phonological?) accident or a reflexof a deeper regularity? In this paper, I argue for the latter option. Departingfrom the observation that each of these elements matches a morpheme, andthat each of the conjunctions involves one simple conjunction, a or i, and pos-sibly one additional element, n or li, I define the syntax and semantics of eachof these morphemes, and finally show that the syntax and semantics of eachof the types of coordination under discussion can be compositionally derivedfrom the syntax and semantics of the morphemes that combine to build therespective conjunction.

Before getting to the point, let me briefly introduce some other empiricalfacts about coordination in S-C. As already mentioned, only three of the con-junctions (i, ni, ili) may appear in contrastive coordination. For the other two,this leads to ungrammaticality.

(3) a. *(A)and.oppos

JovanJ

*(a)and.oppos

uzedetook

meso,meat

aand.oppos

MarijaM

jeAux

odabralachosen

salatu.salad




b. *(Ali)but

JovanJ

*(ali)but

seRefl

*(ali)but

okliznuo,slipped

alibut

nijeNeg.Aux

pao.fallen.

S-C conjunctions pattern in the same way with respect to the possibility toform coordinations of more than two elements. While this option is availablefor the conjunctions i, ili and ni, it cannot be obtained for the conjunctions aand ali. Any attempt to have more than one member of an a or ali coordinationleads to the interpretation of a regular additive i coordination between all theconjuncts except for the last one, and ali/a coordination between the collectionformed and the last member of coordination.

(4) a. JovanJ

jeAux

ležao,lay

spavaoslept

iand

sanjao.dreamt

‘Jovan lay, slept and dreamt.’b. Jovan

Jni-jeNeg-Aux

ležao,lay

spavaoslept

n-in-and

sanjao.dreamt

‘Jovan neither lay, slept nor dreamt.’c. Jovan

JjeAux

ležao,lay

spavaoslept

i-liand-li

sanjao.dreamt

‘Jovan lay, slept or dreamt.’d. Jovan

JjeAux

trcao,ran

spavaoslept

aand

ni-jeNeg-Aux

sanjao.dreamt

‘Jovan ran and slept, and yet didn’t dream.’e. Jovan

JjeAux

trcao,ran

spavao,slept

a-lia-li

ni-jeNeg-Aux

sanjao.dreamt

‘Jovan ran and slept, but didn’t dream.’

Finally, although they all have properties of clitics (by default, they bear nostress and form prosodic words with stressed units), only the conjunctions iliand ali may be followed by an (en)clitic cluster, while the remaining three yieldungrammatical structures in such configurations (for a more detailed picture ofclitics in S-C, see, among others, Boškovic 2000, Progovac 1996, Progovac2000, Radanovic-Kocic 1996, Schütze 1994, Stjepanovic 1998, Tomi 1996).

(5) a. JovanJ

jeAux

kupiobought

loptuball

iand

(*je)CL

krenuowent

(je)CL

dato

igraplay

fudbal.football

‘Jovan bought a ball and went/started to play football.’




b. JovanJ

nijeNeg.Aux

kupiobought

loptuball

ninor

(*je)CL

krenuowent

(je)CL

dato

igraplay

fudbal.football

‘Jovan neither bought a ball nor went/started to play football.’c. Jovan

JjeAux

dobiogot

batinebeaten

ilior

(je)Aux

paofallen

(*je)CL

nizdown

stepenice.stairs‘Jovan got beaten or fell down the stairs.’

d. JovanJ

jeAux

uzeotaken

meso,meat

aand.Oppos

(*je)CL

MarijaM

(je)CL

odabralachosen

salatu.salad

‘Jovan took meat, and/while Marija chose salad.’e. Jovan

JseRefl

okliznuo,slipped

alibut

(je)CL

ostaostayed

(je)CL

naon

nogama.feet.

‘Jovan slipped, but stayed on his feet.’

2. Semantics of i, a, n and li

The conjunction i ‘and’ is the simplest one among the five S-C conjunctionsdiscussed in the paper. ‘Simple’ here means that it has the simplest seman-tic effect, and that it has no categorial or information-structural restrictionson the arguments that it takes. For reasons of simplicity of the analysis, butalso for empirical reasons, I assume that there is only one i, ‘and’ in S-C, andthat it contributes the semantics of ADDITIVE COORDINATION (in the sense ofHaspelmath 2004). In somewhat simplified terms, the denotation of the secondconjunct is added to that of the first conjunct, forming a plural denotation ofthe same semantic type.1 The additive nature of the conjunction targets oneaspect of the denotation of the conjuncts: their temporal dimension, their spa-tial extent (whether one-, two- or three-dimensional), the scalar degree of someof their properties, the sets of truth-conditions of propositions they denote, orother (see somewhat simplified formal representations in (6)).

1. Assuming that the also/too-additive effect that i ‘and’ also has in certain contexts comes fromfocalization of the conjunction together with the latter conjunct:

(i) MarijaM

rešavasolves

iand

NAJTEŽEmost_difficult

zadatke.problems

‘Marija solves even the most difficult (mathematical) problems.’




(6) a. JovanJ

jeAux

videoseen

MarijuM

iand

Petra.P

‘Jovan saw Marija and Peter.’∃e, x. saw(e, J, x) & x=M⊕P.[CP [TP [DPJovan] je [VP [DPJovan] video [&P [DPMariju] i[DPPetra]]]]]

b. JovanJ

jeAux

videoseen

MarijuM

iand

cuoheard

Petra.P

‘Jovan saw Marija and heard Peter.’∃e, e1, e2. saw(e1, J, M) & heard(e2, J, P) & e=e1⊕e2.[CP [TP [DPJovan] je [&P [VP [DPJovan] video [DPMariju]] i [VP

[DPJovan] cuo [DPPetra]]]]]2

c. JovanJ

jeAux

videoseen

Mariju,M

iand

IvanaI

jeAux

culaheard

Petra.P

‘Jovan saw Marija and Ivana heard Peter.’∃w, p, p1, p2. p1: [J saw M] & p2: [I heard P] & p=p1⊕p2 & w∈p.[&P [CP [TP [DPJovan] je [VP [DPJovan] video [DPMariju]]]] i [CP

[TP [DPIvana] je [VP [DPJovan] cula [DPPetra]]]]](where the operation of addition⊕ applied to propositions targetstheir truth-conditions)

In (6a), Marija and Petar are additively coordinated to form one plural object,here the theme of seeing; in (6b), the additive coordination forms one biggereventuality from the eventuality of Jovan seeing Marija and that of him hearingPetar; finally, two propositions are additively coordinated to form one complexproposition, whose truth-conditions are the sum of those of the two conjuncts,and which is operated by one force specified as declarative, as in (6c).

The additive semantics of i can be conceptualized as a relation which takesa particular dimension (or set of dimensions) of the denotation of its first ar-gument, and then adds to it the value along the same dimension for its secondargument, a relation that, especially in multiple coordination, can be seen assome kind of serialization. As opposed to that, the conjunction a, tradition-ally labeled oppositive (Haspelmath 2004), can be described as non-additive,i.e., as establishing a parallel rather than serial relation between the conjuncts.This parallelism is established between two propositions (PolPs/MoodPs, (7a))or utterances (ForcePs, (7b)). Objects (nominal expressions) and eventualities(VPs) cannot be coordinated in this fashion, as illustrated in (7c, d), respec-

2. Here I assume a multiple dominance analysis (along the lines of Citko and Gracanin-Yuksek2009), merely for its simpler representation, but the semantic view that I provide is compatiblewith other syntactic analyses as well.




tively. It appears impossible to establish this type of parallel coordination atlevels lower than propositions.

(7) a. JovanJ

seRefl

probudio,woke_up

aand.Oppos

MarijaM

uspavalafallen_asleep

//

nije.not.‘Jovan woke up, and Marija fell asleep/did not.’

b. JovanJ

seRefl

sigurnosurely

probudio,woke_up

aand.Oppos

dacomp

liCl.Q

seRefl

MarijaM

uspavalafallen_asleep

– nenot

znam.know.1Sg.

‘Jovan surely woke up, and whether Marija fell asleep – I don’tknow.’

c. *JovanJ

jeAux

upoznaomet

MarijuM

aand.Oppos

Petra.Petar

d. *JovanJ

jeAux

trcaorun

aand.Oppos

žmurio.keep_eyes_shut

That keeping propositions and utterances apart is a better description of theeffects of the conjunction a than the traditional one involving opposition, can beshown by examples in which no opposition can be attested, such as (8). In thisexample, the second clause expresses content that does not stand in oppositionwith the first clause, but rather is its direct consequence, and temporally alsoimmediately follows. Still, the conjunction a is used, with the effect of takingthe two assertions involved apart.3

(8) JovanJ

pobedujewin

uin

trci,race

aand.Oppos

osvojicewin

iand

poenepoints

uin

šampionatu.championship‘Jovan is winning the race, and he’s also/even going to get points inthe championship.’

I rather describe examples like this as involving contrast between certain con-stituents, but no opposition between propositions. In this particular case, thereis contrast in some scalar value (informational relevance, expectedness, impor-tance) between the two VPs.

For sake of terminological compatibility with the literature in the field, Icontinue to refer to a as the oppositive conjunction, yet without committing to

3. The i ‘and’ used in the second clause is not a clausal conjunction, but a domain-broadeningitem. This use of i ‘and’ is briefly discussed in respect of the conjunction ni below.




the actual descriptive content that it bears. In the rest of the paper, it is taken asA CONJUNCTION THAT KEEPS UNITS APART, PARALLEL TO EACH OTHER,and would be best described as a dis-junction, were this term not burdenedwith a long tradition of use for a different notion, in math, logic and linguistics.The oppositive effect is often present in sentences involving this conjunction,because propositions and utterances specified to stand apart, without ‘blending’into one, and with a contrastive relation between a pair of their constituents,tend to receive an oppositive flavor; however, this flavor is not obligatorilypresent in such sentences.

The component n, I argue, is the same one used as the S-C NEGATIVE CON-CORD MARKER (an n-element in the sense of Laka 1990). It is combined withthe additive i ‘and’, WITH A DOMAIN-BROADENING EFFECT, which can bestronger, or weaker, depending on the richness of the contextually providedscale of domain-broadening (see Chierchia 2006 for a detailed discussion ofthe domain-broadening effects). The same element used for conjunctive coor-dination – i ‘and’ – is also the most frequent element used in S-C to achieve thedomain-broadening effect (the counterpart of the English even), as illustratedin (9a, b). These examples provide evidence that ni is decomposable into n,the concord marker, and i ‘and’, as here, without a negative context, only thedomain-broadening i ‘and’ component is used (cf. Progovac 1994 for a moreelaborate discussion of the relevant uses of ni and i), in contrast with the com-bination of n and i in (9d, e).

(9) a. JovanJ

rešavasolves

iand

najtežehardest

probleme.problems

‘Jovan solves even the hardest problems.’ (cf. Jovan ne rešava n-inajteže probleme)

b. Dacomp

lili

jeAux

JovanJ

i-kogaand-who

i-kadand-when

i-gdeand-where

i-kakoand-how

uvredio?insulted.

‘Has Jovan ever insulted anyone, at any time, any place, and inany way?’

c. JovanJ

nijeNeg.Aux

upoznaomet

MarijuMarija

n-in-and

Petra.Petar.

‘Jovan hasn’t met Marija nor (did he meet) Petar.’d. Jovan

Jn-i-kogan-and-who

n-i-kadn-and-when

n-i-gden-and-where

n-i-kakon-and-how

nijeNeg.Aux

uvredio.insulted.

‘Jovan has never insulted anyone, at any time, any place, and inany way.’




e. JovanJ

seRefl

nijeNeg.Aux

n-in-and

pomerio.moved

‘Jovan didn’t even move.’

Not only does ni exclusively appear in the context of negation, but it alsophonologically corresponds with the negative concord marker. That the ele-ment in (9c and d) is the same is further supported by examples like (9e), whereni appears as a strong domain-broadening element (similar to the English even)used in the context of, and showing the concord with negation. Note that in gen-eral, ni in the negative concord contexts such as (9d) has a domain-broadeningeffect (the same as the English negative polarity any, Chierchia 2006). Theanalysis provided in Section 4 elaborates in more detail the syntactic and se-mantic aspects of the conjunction ni in the light of its negative concord nature.

Finally, I argue that li in the disjunctive conjunction ili and in the adversativeconjunction ali, is the same li that is normally used as a question particle.

(10) a. Dacomp

*(li)li

imahas

vode?water

‘Is there (any) water?’b. Ima

has(li)li

vode?water

‘Is there (any) water?’c. Koga

who(li)li

jeAux

JovanJovan

zvao?called

‘Who DID Jovan call?’

S-C yes-no questions involve either a complementizer or a fronted verb, fol-lowed by the question clitic li (10a, b). In wh-questions, li is normally not used,as the wh-element itself bears the relevant features. Yet, li may still be added,following the wh-element, in which case a stronger sense of ignorance withrespect to the constituent realized by the wh-expression is yielded. In (10c),the presence of li signals that the speaker has absolutely no clue which personJovan called, and strongly wonders about it, i.e., that none of the potential can-didates is likely to find its place in a correct answer to the question. I arguethat the S-C li pairs up the narrow focus element of the structure it attaches towith an unvalued polarity feature and assigns contrastive focus to the resultingpair. In wh+li questions, this yields a set of mutually contrasted pairings of thepolarity of the question with each individual member of the set of possible can-didates for the answer, and contrasts them with each other. The resulting inter-pretation is that for each member of the set of alternative answers, the speakeris equally uncertain if it could or could not be the right one, an implicature ofwhich is that none of the candidates qualifies very well to be the correct answerto the question. In yes-no questions, the polarity is under focus, and li operates




over the set of possible polarity values (a binary set consisting of the positiveand the negative value), giving rise to a set of two mutually contrasted polar-ity values (see Section 5 for a more detailed discussion). Something similar,I argue, happens with the conjunctions ili and ali, as elaborated in Section 5and 6.

In the remainder of the paper, I argue that the five conjunctions, i, a, ili, aliand ni, are all based on the four presented morphemes, only two of which arereal conjunctions (i, a), the other two elements being used more generally, inother morphological and syntactic configurations (the negative concord marker– n, and the marker of contrastive pairing of the polarity feature and the nar-row focus element – li). The narrow theoretical goal is to provide a simplerand unified theory of S-C conjunctions. In a broader theoretical view, an ex-citing possibility is opened that the structures that are transparently displayedby S-C conjunctions are universal structures for the respective types of coor-dination. At the cognitive level, the hypothesis is formulated that disjunctionas a cognitive operation is derived from additive conjunction, in interactionwith existential quantification, and hence that only conjunction, with two fla-vors (additive and non-additive) among coordinative relations has the status ofa cognitive primitive.

3. Syntax and semantics of i and a

Compared to other conjunctions, i has the most liberal distribution. Like itscounterparts in other Indo-European languages, it can coordinate elements ofdifferent levels of grammatical complexity and of different categories: clauses,phrases, single lexical words, or even functional elements; DPs/N(P)s, vPs/V(P)s, CPs/T(P)s, P(P)s etc. Due to its additive nature, i merges its argumentsinto a bigger entity, resulting in collective interpretation, i.e., plural entitieswith members listed in the conjunction structure.

(11) a. JovanJ

jeAux

doneobrought

(4)4

jabukeapples

iand

(tuthat

trulu)rotten

krušku.pear.

‘Jovan brought (4) apples and that rotten/a pear.’b. Jovan

Jslažeputs

knjigebooks

naon

(policu)shelf

iand

uin

kutiju.box

‘Jovan puts books on (the/a shelf) and in the/a box.’c. Marija

MjeAux

kupilabought

(knjige)books

iand

prodalasold

kompjuter.computer

‘Marija bought (books) and sold a/the computer.’

One possible explanation is that this is a consequence of the primitive na-ture of the conjunction i – other conjunctions bear additional features and/or




structures, which restrict their syntactic/semantic behavior. Another is that itakes the same types of arguments as other conjunctions, but its primitive syn-tactic and semantic nature allows a broad range of options for ellipsis; surfac-ing structures only appear to involve coordination of different categories, butunderlyingly they have the same structure which undergoes different kinds ofellipsis. So far, I refrain from making a decision between these two possible ex-planations, and stick to the differences observed in the surface appearances ofthe respective coordinated structures, but later, especially at the end of Section4, I accept the view in which i differs from other conjunctions.

Conjunction a has a more restricted behavior.

(12) a. *JovanJ

jeAux

doneobrought

(4)4

jabuke,apples

aand

(tu.Oppos

trulu)that

krušku.rotten pear.nearly corresponds to: ‘*Jovan brought (4) apples and yet thatrotten/a pear.’

b. JovanJ

slažeputs

knjigebooks

naon

(policu),shelf

aand.Oppos

*(bacathrow_away

ih)them

uin

kutiju.box

nearly corresponds to: ‘*Jovan puts books on (the/a shelf) andyet in the/a box.’

c. MarijaM

jeAux

kupilabought

knjige,books

aand.Oppos

prodalasold

*(kompjutercomputer

//

*ih).them

nearly corresponds to: ‘Marija bought *(books) and yet sold a/thecomputer/them.’

The examples in (12) do not exhaustively represent the categories and struc-tures which do or do not enter oppositive coordination, but they suffice to il-lustrate that this type of coordination is much more restricted than that withi.

Oppositive coordination takes exactly two members. It necessarily requiresthe presence of a pair of mutually contrasted foci in the two coordinated expres-sions. In addition to this, the two coordinated expressions must share some rel-evant presupposition, which implies that it is unlikely that the two coordinatedexpressions, with the mutually contrasted foci, could hold at the same time. Thepresupposition may be overtly introduced in the sentence, which is most fre-quently done by the introduction of contrastive topics, parts of a topical referentwhich is the bearer of presupposition. This is illustrated in (12b), where baca




ih ‘throws them away’ and slaže ih ‘orders them’ are (mutually) contrastivetopics of the respective members of coordination. A presupposed topical set ofactions involving books is the background of both contrastive topics, and viathese also of the contrast between the contrastive foci of the two expressions,na policu ‘on shelf’ and u kutiju ‘in box’. Cases where the presupposition isintroduced by contrastive topics include those where there’s no opposition be-tween the conjuncts, as in the example in (8) (u trci ‘in race’ and u šampionatu‘in championship’ bear the contrastive topic roles). The relevance of the con-trastive focus is shown in (12c), where the absence of the contrastively focalargument knjige ‘books’ leads to ungrammaticality. The pronoun ih ‘them’,coreferential with the direct object of the first member of coordination cannotbe contrastively focal due to coreferentiality with the expression it is supposedto stand in contrast with. The same type of interpretation is derived if this ele-ment is elided (since it can be elided only if it bears no focus and is identical,hence coreferential, with its counterpart in the other member of coordination).

A case which illustrates presupposition without overt introduction, and witha real oppositive relation between the conjuncts, is given in (13). The sentenceinvolves a presupposition that everyone who visits calls in advance (e.g., tomake an appointment). The second sentence contributes information which di-rectly confronts this presupposition.

(13) JovanJ

jeAux

došao,come

aand.Oppos

ni-jeNeg-Aux

seRefl

prethodnopreviously

javio.call‘Jovan came, and he didn’t previously call.’

This contrast, or conflict, lies in the core of the descriptively observed oppo-sition between the coordinated expressions. As the structure of the oppositivecoordination in S-C is defined over the notions of contrastive focus and pre-supposition (in some cases overtly introduced by contrastive topics), tightlyassociated to the syntactic projections of the IP and CP layers (e.g., É. Kiss1995, Rizzi 1997), it is actually expected that oppositive coordination involvesa restricted set of categories – those belonging to these two layers. The restric-tions in (12) are thus explained: oppositive coordination of categories whichdo not belong to the IP or CP layer is out. And the opposition that this type ofcoordination often introduces comes from the contrast between the elementsbearing particular discourse-roles in the two sentences under coordination.

Oppositive coordination (as well as adversative, discussed in Section 6) fig-ures at a high structural level, the level of categories involved in the specifi-cation of discourse-related properties of the sentence. This is a consequenceof the information-structural restrictions that the conjunction a imposes: it re-




quires the presence of contrastive foci in both members of coordination, andthese are specified and interpreted at the level at which the discourse is inter-faced, which is the clausal level. Still, in oppositive coordination, both mem-bers of coordination update the discourse at the same time, i.e., they update thediscourse coordinated, and on the background of a shared presupposition. Thepresupposition cannot be altered between the discourse-updates by the two co-ordinated expressions. Yet, once the level of coordination is reached (i.e., oncea pair of conjuncts is interpreted), the discourse must be interfaced for the in-terpretation to take place.4 This is why this type of coordination can never getto a third conjunct of the same level, which is one of the generalizations madein Section 1, in relation to the example 4).

An anonymous reviewer observes that there are cases in which oppositivecoordination appears to coordinate smaller structural segments, namely: adjec-tives or AdjPs, supporting it with the following example.

(14) gigantskigiantly

snažno,strong

aa

istovremenoat_the_same_time

izuzetnoexceptionaly

prefinjenosophisticated

muziciranjeplaying_music

‘giantly strong, while at the same time exceptionally sophisticatedplaying of music’

Arguably, however, these structures are of the IP/CP category. Evidence comesfrom the fact that a can be used to coordinate adjectival predicates in copu-lar constructions and non-restrictive adnominal modifiers, but not restrictivemodifiers.

(15) a. A: Kakvuhow

knjigubook

siAux

kupio?bought

‘What kind of book did you buy?’B: Dugu,

longaa


uzbudljivu.exciting

‘A long, while at the same time exciting one.’

4. I assume that discourse roles can only be interpreted on the background of the discourse,i.e., at the discourse interface. In fact, following the semantic tradition of Discourse Repre-sentation Theory, the discourse interface might be the only direct semantic interface of thesyntactic module. At this interface, linguistic expressions identify corresponding discoursereferents, and add information to their ‘file-cards’. Discourse roles and presupposition play animportant role in this process: they identify the discourse domain and referents to be updated,and mark the bits of information that contribute the update. Crucially, with the oppositive co-ordination, the update takes place at the same time for both coordinated expressions, targetingone joint (possibly complex) topic, on the background of one joint set of presuppositions.




b. A: Kojuwhich

knjigubook

siAux

kupio?bought

‘Which book did you buy?’B: #Dugu,

longaa


uzbudljivu.exciting

‘A long, while at the same time exciting one.’

To sum up the section, i is an additive conjunction, which merges its argu-ments into bigger entities; it is quite unrestricted for the categories of argu-ments it takes. The oppositive conjunction a is best described as one involvinga certain contrast, which blocks the formation of plural entities from its ar-guments, establishing a parallel structure between them. It only coordinatesclausal expressions and the contrast it establishes is located at the discourse-interface, where the coordinated expressions are sent together, in coordina-tion. This also explains why it always takes only two members. The distinctionbetween the two conjunctions comes from the information-structural require-ments of the latter, which needs its arguments to involve mutually contrastedfoci, and a shared presupposition on the background of which the contrast isestablished.

4. Syntax and semantics of ni

As indicated in Section 2, I analyze ni as n-i, where i is the additive conjunction,and n is a negative concord marker.5 Negative concord elements in S-C showon all (indefinite) elements that appear in the scope of negation. Consider thecontrast in (16).

(16) a. MarijaM

nijeNeg.Aux

pojelaeaten

supu,soup

sendvicsandwich

n-in-and

kolac.cake.

‘Marija ate neither a/the soup, nor a/the sandwich, nor a/the cake.’

5. Note that while a similar type of decomposition is possible in English for nor, into an n-element plus or, Wurmbrand (2008) argues that disjunction does not underlie the semanticsof nor in English. This is not against the proposed analysis, as a) S-C ni is not necessarily thesame element as the English nor, b) I do not assume a disjunction component of ni in S-C andc) as presented in section 5, I derive even the meaning of disjunction.




b. MarijaM

nijeNeg.Aux

pojelaeaten

supu,soup

sendvicsandwich

iand

kolac.cake.

‘It’s not the case that Marija ate a/the soup, a/the apple and a/thecake.’‘The things Marija didn’t eat are a/the soup, a/the sandwich anda/the cake.’6

The only available interpretation for (16a) is that Marija ate none of the listeditems, she did not eat (the) soup, she did not eat a/the sandwich, and she didnot eat a/the cake. The sentence is false if Marija ate a/the cake, but did noteat (the) soup and a/the sandwich. In (16b), the reading with the intonationclosest to neutral is that Marija did not eat it all: (the) soup, a/the sandwichand a/the cake. The sentence is true in the above situation, where she ate a/thecake, but did not eat (the) soup and a/the sandwich. With a special intonation,strongly backgrounding Marija nije pojela ‘Marija didn’t eat’ (i.e., with thepresupposition that there is a list of things that Marija did not eat) and indi-vidually stressing each member of the coordination, the interpretation whereMarija ate none of the listed items is also available. Here, all the members ofthe coordination are members of some broader topical set. They alone form anew relevant set: a subset of the topical set which is a bearer of informationfocus. If we present this intonation as in (17a), the discourse functions woulddistribute as in (17b), and the sentence could be an answer to the questions in(17c, d), assigning Marija in (17a) topic and contrastive topic, respectively.

(17) a. MarijaM

nijeNeg.Aux

pojelaeaten

SUPU,soup

(BREAK)sandwich

SENDVICand

(BREAK)cake.

i KOLAC.

‘The things Marija didn’t eat are a/the soup, a/the sandwich anda/the cake.’

6. An anonymous reviewer notes that when ni is used, as in the example in (16a), the last con-junct may also be an i-word (having the additive i without the negative n-component, e.g.,i-jedan kolac, ‘a_single cake’), but not an n-word (e.g., *n-i-jedan kolac, ‘n-a_single cake’),while when i is used, the last conjunct may only be an n-word, and not an i-word (n-i-jedankolac, ‘n-a_single cake’, *i-jedan kolac, ‘a_single cake’). Assuming Progovac’ (1994) analy-sis, in which an n-word must be bound by negation in its local domain (minimally PolP, i.e.,IP), and a non-n-word, including i-words, must not be bound in its local domain, this impliesthat in the given minimal pair, i coordinates smaller segments than IPs (hence they are inthe domain of the higher negation), while ni coordinates minimally IPs, or bigger structures(hence they are free in their local domain, and only the entire coordination is in the local do-main of the higher negation, hence the conjunction is bound by it and appears as an n-wordfor this reason).




b. Background:(nije pojela) iz skupa stvari ocekivanih da budu pojedene‘(didn’t eat) from the set of things expected to be eaten’(Contrastive) topic:Marija (nije pojela)Marija (didn’t eat)Focus:supa, sendvic i kolac‘a/the soup, a/the sandwich and a/the cake’

c. Which items, of all the items served, did Marija not eat?d. Who didn’t eat all the items served, and what did each of them

not eat?

This gives us three interesting information-structural patterns with respect tonegative concord in coordination. The first one has the coordination back-grounded or topical, as in the default reading of (16b). In this case, the entireconstituent formed by coordination is old in the discourse. It behaves like adefinite expression, which, as a whole, bears one discourse function. Properdefinite expressions in S-C (as well as in most or all other languages) do notenter negative concord.7 The interpretation treats the denotation of this con-stituent as one referent, and in the example in (16b), if there is one memberof the referent set that is not eaten, the sentence is true because it is not thecase that the referent is eaten up. The coordinated constituent appears as it isrepresented in the discourse – as a coordinated structure with a collective in-trepretation.

In the second case, as in (17), there is a topical/backgrounded set, but the setdenoted by the constituent formed by coordination is only a subset of this set,i.e., the referent of this constituent does not exhaust the topical/backgroundedone. Moreover, there is no discourse function falling on the entire constituentformed by coordination; rather, each of the members of coordination bears its

7. That definite expressions in S-C do not enter negative concord is shown in (i).

(i) a. A: Da li je Jovan pojeo (neku) mlecnu cokoladicu?‘Did Jovan eat (sm) milk chocolate?’

B: Ne,no

nijeNeg.Aux

pojeoeaten

ni-jednun-one

(mlecnumilk

cokoladicu).chocolate

‘No, he didn’t eat any milk chocolate.’b. A: Da li je Jovan pojeo onu mlecnu cokoladicu?

‘Did Jovan eat that milk chocolate?’B: Ne,

nonijeNeg.Aux

((*ni-)je)n-it

pojeoeaten

((*ni-)onun-that

mlecnumilk

cokoladicu).chocolate

‘No, he didn’t eat that milk chocolate.’




own discourse function, and they all bear the same discourse function of focus.The constituent formed by coordination appears as a regular i-coordination.

The third case is the one showing negative concord, as in (16a). Here again,a topical, or backgrounded set is part of the discourse. This structure sharesone feature with the first, and one with the second. Like in the second case,each member of the constituent formed by coordination bears its own discoursefunction – the focus. Like in the first case, the referent set of this constituent isidentical with the topical or backgrounded set that is present in the discourse.Due to the individual discourse functions of the members of coordination, therespective constituent in the sentence does not refer to the corresponding set inthe discourse. Rather, it forms a (new, indefinite) subset of this set, but in anexhaustive fashion, i.e. the newly specified set is identical to its superset. Asnegation is a focus-sensitive operator, it needs to be marked that each memberof the coordination bears focus and hence individually establishes a relationwith the negation. This is done by the negative concord element n.

That each member of the coordination bears its own independent informa-tion focus, as in the second and third case, means that each of them has itsown IP/CP in which this focus is realized. The coordination undergoes ellip-sis of the material shared between all the coordinated elements, thus receivingthe surface form in which the smaller constituents than IPs/CPs appear to becoordinated. Consequently, the negation, which is generated in PolP, a projec-tion that is part of the IP layer, also has multiple appearances, for each coor-dinated element, surfacing as one only after ellipsis (or not surfacing at all,except through concord, as argued in Zeijlstra 2004). The effect of distributionof negation, found in sentences with the conjunction ni, corresponds thus toa real multiple appearance of the negation in each of the coordinated expres-sions. The first of the three cases is the only one in which the coordinationindeed might be targeting other categories than clauses (IPs or CPs), such asnominal expressions (DPs, NPs).

5. Syntax and semantics of ili

An interesting generalization seems to be emerging from the conjunctions dis-cussed so far: apart from the additive conjunction, all the others (a, ni, andas argued in what follows also ili and ali) are restricted to coordinating cate-gories from the IP and CP domains. The reason is that the additional semanticsthat they carry involves foci and/or focus-sensitive operators, and that thereforeeach of the elements they operate over (i.e., members of coordination) needs tobe independently marked for focus, hence requiring its own IP or CP domainin which this focus is realized. In the remaining of the paper, I refer to them asthe clausal conjunctions.




The phonological shape of the disjunctive conjunction ili opens a temptingpossibility of analyzing this item as morphologically complex, and consistingof the conjunction i and the question morpheme li. The temptation gets strongerobserving that the fifth member of the set of S-C conjunctions, ali, may sim-ilarly be analyzed into the conjunction a and the same question morpheme li.In this section, I propose an analysis of the syntactic and semantic behavior ofili along these lines, and sketch some more general cognitive consequences ofsuch an analysis.

As briefly outlined in Section 2, the element li normally appears as a clitic,and behaves as a question-marker. As illustrated in (18), partly repeated from(10), it may derive yes-no questions, either with a complementizer (18a), inwhich case it is obligatory, or with a fronted verb (18b), in which case it may beleft out with a sufficiently strong question intonation. It may also appear in wh-questions, turning a regular question into an expression of complete ignoranceor even surprise: the speaker states that none of the members of the restrictorset is a more likely candidate than the others for the position lexicalized by thewh-expression. In (18c), none of the possible candidates to be called by Jovanqualifies as more likely than the others, to be the one actually called. This maybring in an implicature that the speaker is surprised that anyone was calledwhatsoever. The sentence in (18d) may be used with a question intonation, orwith an intonation of surprise, in both cases with some interrogative nuance,but also interpolated with an extreme scalar value. Finally, li is often used asan intensifier, expressing a high degree of some predicate (18e), or in swearing(18f), similar to the Germanic use of interrogative elements for intensification(Is she intelligent (or what)!, What a character (he is)!).

(18) a. Dacomp

lili

imahas

vode?water

‘Is there (any) water?’b. Ima

has(li)li

vode?water

‘Is there (any) water?’c. Koga

who(li)li

jeAux

JovanJovan

zvao?(!)called

‘Who could it be that Jovan called?!’d. Njega

him(li)li

jeAux

JovanJovan

zvao?(!)called

‘Is it HIM that Jovan called (of all the people)?!’e. Bistar

cleverlili

si!be.2Sg

‘How clever you are!’




f. Suncesun

(li)li

tiyou.Dat

poljubim!kiss.1Sg

a curse, lit. ‘(Do) I kiss your sun!’

I propose to analyze li as the lexicalization of an operator which takes thefocal element of the clause, pairs it up with an unvalued polarity feature, andassigns contrastive focus to the pair formed (contrasting it to the set of pairsformed by the polarity feature and the alternatives to the original focal elementin the pair). The polarity feature is then valued by the polarity feature of theclause. I take it that in general, in S-C, the default value of the polarity featureis positive (i.e., without overt specification), while the negative value is markedby a negative element.

In questions, the interrogative force targets a focal constituent, which isnormally un(der)specified, and denotes a set of alternatives. In regular wh-questions, the wh-expression bears focus, denotes a set of possible alternativefillers for the position in which it appears, and interacts with the interrogativeforce. In li-questions, li forms a pair from the focal element of the clause andan unvalued polarity feature and assigns it contrastive focus; the interrogativeforce targets the pair formed, as it is both focal (due to the contrastive focusassigned by li) and un(der)specified (due to the fact that the unvalued polarityfeature that it involves specifies a set of two alternatives, for its two possiblevalues). In yes-no questions, the focal element is the polarity of the clause; thepair formed then involves a polarity feature unspecified for value and the po-larity feature of the clause, which always has a certain value. It is contrastedwith the pairing of an unvalued polarity feature and the opposite polarity tothat of the clause. The interrogative force targets the pair formed and the set ofalternatives that it defines and is contrasted with, deriving a polarity question.This is illustrated in (19a).

(19) a. DAcomp

lili

imašhave.2Sg

vode?water

‘Do you have (any) water?’{〈[pol: __],[pol:+]〉}→←{〈[pol:__], [pol:−]〉}(‘→←’ stands for contrasts with)

b. Dacomp

lili

imašhave.2Sg

VODE?water

‘Is it water that you have?’{〈[pol: __], water〉}→←{〈[pol: __], food〉,〈[pol: __], cigarets〉. . . }

In case some other element bears narrow focus, as in (19b), the pair involvingan unvalued polarity feature and the narrow focal element is contrasted againstthe pairing of the unvalued polarity feature with the alternatives to the focalelement.




Syntactically, the analysis proposed is compatible with the views of nega-tion in S-C that specify negative polarity in the specifier or adjuncts to PolP,and with those under which polarity is never overtly marked in NegP, but onlyvia negative concord – on the verb, and possibly on other constituents (see Zei-jlstra 2004 for a discussion). The position of li would be in the polarity head,where it would appear without a specified polarity value, and simply manip-ulate the unvalued feature that it bears. Only the higher structure introduces apolarity value (with or without overt phonological realization, depending onthe analysis). From this position, li interacts with the narrow focus element inits scope, and either trigger its movement as in (18b–f), or only establishes therelevant syntactic and semantic relation with the focal element staying in situ(19b).

Ssince the semantics of a polarity question is basically the semantics of apolarity disjunction, the semantics of a polarity question with a narrow focuson a constituent other than the polarity is very close to the semantics of a sen-tence involving disjunction within the respective constituent. This means thatwe can combine the analyses of additive conjunction of i, with that of li asspecified above, and show how it derives the disjunctive semantics of ili. Thepresent analysis relies on the observation outlined in Section 1, that each of themembers of disjunctive coordination has its own narrow focus element. It ispredicted that each of these focal elements interacts with the li marker in thePolP of the clause embedding the coordination, i.e. that li pairs up an unvaluedpolarity feature with the focal elements of each of the members of coordina-tion. The configuration at the point of projection of PolP is given in (20a), andthe effect of li in (20b) (the positive value for the polarity feature in the speci-fier/adjunct to PolP is taken arbitrarily for the example – there could as well bea negative value in this position).8

8. An issue arising here concerns the morphological realization of li as a suffix to i. I do notgo into a detailed discussion of this problem, but I generally assume that the phonologicallyrealized li is not the base generated one, but rather its reflex, some kind of agreement orconcord that i shows with the polarity head and li that is generated there. The same holds forli in ali, discussed in Section 6.




(20) a. [PolP[pol: +] . . . [PolP li [pol: __] [TPi . . . [&P

i [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ]i [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ](i [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ])*]]]]

b. [PolP[pol: +] . . . [PolP [&P

i [pol: __] [TPi . . . [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ]i [pol: __] [TPi . . . [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ](i [pol: __] [TPi . . . [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ] )*]]]]

The interpretation of (20b) is the following: members of coordination (markedby i) are paired up with an unspecified polarity value (the effect of li), and thepolarity value that is specified somewhat higher operates over the coordinationof these pairs. Each member of the coordination is underspecified for polarityand denotes a binary set of mutually contrasted values (for the two possiblevalues of the polarity feature). This means that each member of coordinationis a binary set of two mutually contrasted pairs of a polarity value and a focalelement.

(21) [PolP[pol: +] . . . [PolP [&P

i [〈[pol: +] [TPi . . . [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ]]〉↓↑

〈[pol: −] [TPi . . . [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ]]〉]i [〈[pol: +] [TPi . . . [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ]]〉

↓↑

〈[pol: −] [TPi . . . [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ]]〉]i ([〈[pol: +] [TPi . . . [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ]]〉

↓↑

〈[pol: −] [TPi . . . [XP . . . narr. focus element. . . ]]〉])*]]]]

The additive coordination (i) forms collections of pairs. A crucial restrictionis introduced at this point: only pairs which are not mutually contrasted mayenter a collection. The coordination forms all the possible pairs of contrastedcollections (such that no collection contains two mutually contrasted units).This is illustrated in (22) for a disjunctive coordination of three members.




(22) () &P: { 〈[pol:+][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉↓↑

〈[pol:−][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:−][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:−][TP3]〉,〈[pol:+][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:−][TP3]〉

↓↑

〈[pol:−][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:−][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉,〈[pol:+][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:−][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:−][TP3]〉

↓↑

〈[pol:−][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉,〈[pol:−][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:−][TP3]〉

↓↑

〈[pol:+][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:−][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉 }

The set formed distributes over the polarity value specified higher in the struc-ture, which yields a set of (coordinations of) propositions marked for polarity.In the example in (20) through (23), there is a set of eight such propositions.The aggregate sentence is true (taken that it is a declarative sentence) in caseany of the eight possibilities is evaluated as true. Thus if the combination of apositive polarity over whatever TP1 expresses, and negative polarity over TP2and TP3 was evaluated as true, the sentence involving the disjunctive coordi-nation is true as well.

(23) [pol: +] [&P: { 〈[pol:+][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉↓↑


↓↑


↓↑


↓↑

〈[pol:+][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:−][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉 }




Finally, for each combination of the specified polarity value and a coordi-nation of pairs of an unvalued polarity feature and a TP, only the pairs (i.e.,conjuncts) that match with the specified polarity in the polarity value are re-ally accessable to the force of the sentence. In the particular example from(23), for the collection of pairs selected, this is only the first conjoined pair,[pol:+][TP1], as in (24a), effectively giving (24b).

(24) a. [pol:+] [&P: { 〈[pol:+][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉↓↑


↓↑


↓↑


↓↑

〈[pol:+][TP1]〉 i 〈[pol:−][TP2]〉 i 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉 }b. [[pol:+] [&P: 〈[pol:+][TP1]〉]]

The denotation of a sentence involving a disjunctive coordination is thus un-specified, but restricted to a set of assertions/questions or perhaps sentences ofsome other force, which take different sets of pairs formed by li, such that thepolarity of each such pair matches the polarity of the sentence. The speakerexpresses ignorance about the particular set of propositions the force of thesentence chooses, but specifies the restrictor set within which a singular col-lection has to be selected. This is parallel to the partitive construction (e.g., oneof the boxes), where a definite restrictor set is given, and (in the default case)a singular unidentified member of this set is the actual denotation of the con-struction. For the example in (20) through (22), the set of possible collectionsof pairs is given in (25).




(25) [[pol:+] { [&P 〈[pol:+][TP1]〉, 〈[pol:+][TP2]〉, 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉],[&P 〈[pol:+][TP1]〉, 〈[pol:+][TP2]〉],[&P 〈[pol:+][TP1]〉],[&P 〈[pol:+][TP1]〉, 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉],[&P 〈[pol:+][TP2]〉, 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉],[&P 〈[pol:+][TP2]〉],[&P 〈[pol:+][TP3]〉] }

The set of possible collections for a sentence with a positive polarity anda three-member disjunctive coordination fully corresponds to the truth-valuetableau of a three-member disjunction in logic. And this holds also for anyother number of members of coordination. Let us illustrate this on a concreteexample, and let us take a two-member coordination for sake of clarity. Whilethe coordinating component of the conjunction, the additive i, is base gener-ated, and originally operates, at the level of the constituent that surfaces ascoordinated, li is generated higher up, in PolP (26b), and as described, it formspairs of a polarity feature unspecified for value and a TP for each member ofthe original coordination (26c).

(26) a. JovanJ

nijeNeg.Aux

pojeoeaten

JABUKUapple

ILIi-li

BRESKVU.peach

John didn’t eat an apple or a peach.b. [PolP [[pol:−] . . . [PolP li [pol: __] [TP John ate i

[DP an apple ] i [DP a peach ] ] ] ]c. [PolP [[pol:−] . . .

[PolP i-li 〈[pol: __] [TP1 John ate [DP an apple ] ]〉i-li 〈[pol: __] [TP2 John ate [DP a peach ] ]〉 ] ]

The structure derived denotes a collection of contrasted pairs, contrastingidentical pairs with the opposite polarity values, as in (27a). This collection isequivalent to a set of conjoined, mutually non-contrasted pairs, as in (27b).

(27) a. [PolP [pol:−][PolP i 〈[pol:+][TP1John ate an apple]〉↓↑

〈[pol:−][TP1John ate an apple]〉i 〈[pol:+][TP2John ate a peach]〉

↓↑

〈[pol:−][TP2John ate a peach]〉 ]]




b. [PolP[pol:−] { 〈[pol:+] [TP1John ate an apple]〉i 〈[pol:+][TP2John ate a peach]〉,

〈[pol:+] [TP1John ate an apple]〉i 〈[pol: –][TP2John ate a peach]〉,

〈[pol:−] [TP1John ate an apple]〉i 〈[pol: +][TP2John ate a peach]〉,

〈[pol:−] [TP1John ate an apple]〉i 〈[pol: –][TP2John ate a peach]〉}]

Finally, all the pairs involving a polarity value different than that of the polarityof the clause are invisible for the higher structural projections, including Force.As a result, we get (28), a structure in which the negative polarity of the clausehas the option of selecting any of the three compatible interpretations derivedby the disjunctive conjunction ili: one in which a TP involving the first memberof conjunction bears negative polarity, one where the one involving the secondmember bears negative polarity, and one in which the additive coordination ofthese two TPs bears the negative polarity value. Again, this exactly correspondsto the logical tableau of (in this case negated) disjunction.

(28) [PolP [pol:−] { 〈[pol:−] [TP2 John ate a peach]〉,〈[pol:−] [TP1 John ate an apple]〉,〈[pol:−] [TP1 John ate an apple]〉

i 〈[pol:−] [TP2 John ate a peach]〉}]

A remark is due in respect of some broader formal and cognitive consid-erations. Disjunction is usually treated as one of the most primitive logicaloperations, and this status is usually also exported into the cognitive domain.For instance, approaches to questions such as Stokhof and Groenendijk (1984)deconstruct the category of questions in terms of disjunction of propositions,taking questions as something derived, and disjunction as something primi-tive. Questions emerge, such as: Why then in any language disjunction wouldappear as a derived operation? Is disjunction only derived at the level of lan-guage, or does it also have this status in cognition? Is disjunction only derivedin Serbo-Croatian/Slavic, or is it universally derived crosslinguistically? Themost interesting hypothesis is the strongest one, from the linguistic point ofview: that disjunction is derived not just in linguistics, but in cognition too,i.e. that language just reflects the way cognition handles it. In such a case, itsderived nature not only holds crosslinguistically, but also for every cognitiveinstance of disjunction in every human individual. This requires a reformula-tion of a significant part of semantic theory, and favors the cognitive approachto semantics (Jackendoff 1990), or that in which syntax and semantics blendinto one capacity (Arsenijevic and Hinzen 2007). It is however yet anothertopic that has to be left for future work, as its complexity exceeds by far theframe of the present paper.




6. Syntax and semantics of ali

The analysis of ali ‘but’ by now has both its main components introduced. Oneis the analysis of a, and the other that of li. Conjunction a is analyzed as a non-additive (contrastive, oppositive) conjunction of the clausal level, which takestwo clauses with mutually contrastive foci and a shared presupposition, coor-dinates them without forming collectives (due to the contrast), and updates thediscourse with the entire coordination. Li is taken as an element that pairs up anunvalued polarity feature with the elements that bear narrow focus, establishinga contrastive relation between them.

One remaining issue is that of the scopal relation between these two ele-ments. In ili it was clear that li scoped over i, as li figures higher than TPwhich is usually the upper boundary within which the narrow focus would bespecified, while the conjunction often surfaces at the level of VP arguments oradjuncts. In ali, the scope is the inverse. Conjunction a operates at the level ofdiscourse-interface, where discourse-relations are fixed and interpreted, whileli is at an intermediate level where these relations are still in the process ofderivation specified. Consequently, the interpretation, illustrated on the exam-ple in (29), is expected to be the following.

(29) JovanJ

jeAux

otišaogone

uin

park,park

a-lia-li

ni-jeNeg-Aux

našaofound

Mariju.M

‘Jovan went to the park, but didn’t find Marija.’

Implementing the analyses of the two components of the conjunction ali,goes as follows. The a component marks that the foci of the two expressionsare in mutual contrast; in the example in (29), the focus is on the entire PolP,as represented in (30a). The effect of li is a formation of pairs from the focalelements of the two clauses and an unvalued polarity feature (30b).

(30) a. [[pol:+] li [TP1 J went to the park]]→← [[pol:−] li [TP2 J foundM]]

b. 〈[pol:__][[pol:+][TP1J went to. . . ]]〉→←〈[pol:__][[pol:−] li [TP1J went to. . . ]]〉

↓↑

〈[pol:__], [[pol:+] [TP2 J found M]]〉→←〈[pol:__][[pol:−] li [TP2 J found M]]〉

This derives two contrasts, one within each member of coordination, and ef-fect of li, and another between the members of coordination, coming from theconjunct a component. As each contrast has to be interpreted at the discourseinterface, each of the expression must update the discourse first, and only then




be interpreted in the coordination. This results in the update of the presuppo-sition after the first member of coordination is integrated in the discourse, andbefore this is done with the second member. The presupposition before the en-tire sentence is that if Jovan goes to the park, he will find Marija there. First,the discourse is updated by the assertion that Jovan went to the park, as op-posed to the contrastive alternative that he did not do it. The presuppositionis updated by this information: since Jovan went to the park, the presupposi-tion is now that he found Marija there. The second clause contrasts with thefirst coordinated clause in combination with this presupposition. This propertydistinguishes ali-coordination from a-coordination in which there is only onecontrast, and the coordinated structure updates the discourse simultaneously,on the background of a shared presupposition.

Let me illustrate this difference. Take the minimal pair in (31). The sentencein (31), involving a-coordination, has two general classes of interpretation. Oneis that a simply marks the parallel relation between the two coordinated clauses,i.e. that they do not undergo additive conjunction to form one homogeneouswhole. The other is that there is a presupposition that people who like strawber-ries also eat raspberries, shared by the two clauses, and that on the backgroundof this presupposition it is unlikely that one and the same person would likethe former, and not eat the latter; it is surprising that anyone has this property,and Jovan is not necessarily part of the presupposition in any relevant way. Inboth cases, a coordination of mutually contrasted elements is formed, and thenthis coordinated structure updates the discourse. The sentence in (31b) has onlyone class of readings, in which each clause independently predicates over Jo-van (updates its file-card in the discourse), but the update of the second clauseis in contrast with that of the first, and more prominently, with a presuppositiontriggered by the first clause.

(31) a. JovanJ

volilikes

jagode,strawberries

aa

nenot

jedeeats

maline.raspberries

‘Jovan likes strawberries, and yet doesn’t eat raspberries.’b. Jovan

Jvolilikes

jagode,strawberries

alia-li

nenot

jedeeats

maline.raspberries

‘Jovan likes strawberries, but doesn’t eat raspberries.’

To strengthen this point, take a look at another two minimal pairs of sentences,in (32) and (33). The sentence in (32a) has only the pure contrastive readingabove, without any relevant relation with the presupposed information. Thisis because it elides the verb, which is possible only if the verb is topical, andthis further implies that Jovan and Marija bear contrastive topic functions, trig-gering the interpretation where the background of the contrast is the topicalrather than the presupposed information. As no such meaning is possible forali-coordination, and the sentence does not provide for any other possible inter-




pretation, the sentence in (32b) is ill-formed (it slightly improves if strawber-ries and raspberries are assigned extreme values on the opposite ends of somescale, which is again in agreement with the present analysis).

(32) a. JovanJ

jeAux

pojeoeaten

jagodu,strawberry

aa

MarijaM

malinu.raspberry

‘Jovan ate a strawberry, while/and Mary ate a raspberry.’b.??/#Jovan

JjeAux

pojeoeaten

jagodu,strawberry

a-lia-li

MarijaM

malinu.raspberry

Consider now (33). In (33a), the second clause is interpreted as fully par-enthetical, and the oppositive coordination is established between the first andthe third clause. No opposition is established between the second and the thirdclause. In the example in (33b), the third clause, introduced by the conjunctionali, contrasts with the second clause. The most straightforward interpretation isthat as Jovan liked the strawberry so much, it was expected that Marija wouldalso take a strawberry – but she did not, and rather ate a raspberry. This isexactly what the present analysis predicts, if in a-coordination both clausesupdate the discourse at the same time, and in ali-coordination, each clause in-dependently integrates in the discourse, so that the one introduced by ali isinterpreted in a discourse that has already been updated by the other memberof coordination.

(33) a. JovanJ

jeAux

pojeoeaten

jagodu,strawberry

iand

jakostrongly

muCl

seRefl

dopala,like

aa

MarijaM

jeAux

pojelaeaten

malinu.raspberry

‘Jovan ate a strawberry, and liked it very much, while Mary ate araspberry.’

b. JovanJ

jeAux

pojeoeaten

jagodu,strawberry

iand

jakostrongly

muCl

seRefl

dopala,like

alia-li

jeAux

MarijaM

pojelaeaten

malinu.raspberry

‘Jovan ate a strawberry, and he liked it very much, but Marija atea raspberry.’

7. Implications and questions

In the previous six sections, I have presented an analysis of S-C conjunctions,in which their morphological complexity is argued to reflect a deeper syntacticand semantic complexity. This analysis derives the specific semantic effects of




each of these conjunctions from a constant set of assumptions about the syn-tactic and semantic behavior of its parts, in a particular sytactic configurationthe analysis is based on. Under a strong universalist approach to the syntax-semantics interface (e.g., as advocated in Hinzen 2007), this implies that thestructures recognized in S-C are (at least to a large extent) the structures thatuniversally represent the meanings associated with the four types of coordi-nation disucussed in this paper. A topic for further research would be to lookfor evidence, such as scope issues, information-structural patterns, or syntac-tic effects, showing that indeed similar structures underly the correspondinginstances of coordination in other languages as well.

As briefly mentioned in Section 5, this analysis has implications for the cog-nitive status of the disjunction operation. Due to its formal simplicity and dueto its similarity with the operation of conjunction, disjunction is often takento be a primitive in the calculi used to represent natural language semantics(see Pietrosky 2008’s discussion on this issue). In the present approach, (lin-guistic) disjunction is a complex meaning, derived in a conspiracy of the moreprimitive semantic operation of conjunction, syntax and information structure(focus, contrastivity). In a cognitive perspective, this may be viewed in twoways. One is to extend the linguistic complexity of disjunction into the cogni-tive domain, taking disjunction as a complex cognitive operation. The other isto take that the cognitive disjunction is independent of the linguistic disjunctivecoordination, and that the complexity of the latter is orthogonal to whether theformer is primitive, or complex as well.

Finally, the accounts of the oppositive and adversative coordination, in Sec-tions 3 and 6 respectively, rely on the existence of two types of clauses thatmay be coordinated: one which is structurally richer, and directly accesses thediscourse (namely, adversative coordination), and another, which is structurallysomewhat defective, and does not access the discourse before it enters coordi-nation (oppositive coordination). Independent evidence for these two types ofclauses can be found in many other domain, as extensively argued in the recentwork of Lilliane Haegeman, for instance Haegeman (2003). In fact, the asym-metries between oppositive and adversative coordination present yet anotherargument in favor of such a view.

Finally, an anonymous reviewer drew my attention to an interesting fact: inS-C the oppositive coordination allows for gapping, while it is banned in theadversative coordination, which is similar to the situation in English, where butdisallows gapping, while and (which is also used for the oppositive coordina-tion) allows it.

(34) a. JovanJ

jeAux

pojeoeaten

jabuku,apple

aa

MarijaM

(jeAux

pojela)eaten

dunju.quince

‘Jovan ate an Apple, while Mary ate a quince.’




b. JovanJ

jeAux

pojeoeaten

jabuku,apple

aliali

MarijaM

*(jeAux

pojela)eaten

dunju.quince‘Jovan ate an apple, but Mary ate a quince.’

c. John ate an apple, and Mary (ate) a quince.d. John ate an apple, but Mary *(ate) a quince.

This relates the present analysis to the work done on English, i.e., to amongothers Sag et al. (1985), Bianchi and Zamparelli (2004), who argue, just likeI do, that the adversative coordination is always among clausal constituents.Barwise and Cooper (1981), as well as Vicente (2010) argue, however, that butcoordination of DPs is possible too. The empirical material that they offer tosupport this argument involves the so-called corrective but – as for instancein 35a). Interestingly, the corrective but allows for gapping, unlike the regularadversative one, as shown in 35b).

(35) a. John didn’t eat an apple, but a quince.b. Jovan

JnijeNeg-Aux

pojeoeaten

jabuku,apple

negoa

dunju.quince

‘Jovan didn’t eat an Apple, but a quince.’

Corrective coordination in S-C is marked by a special conjunction (perhapsactually a preposition): nego. In other words, ali is really reserved for adversa-tive coordination (including the counter-expectational cases), and has a moreuniform behavior than the English but.

I believe that the ban on gapping can be derived from the proposed analy-sis. I analyze the adversative coordination as a coordination of two expressionswhich both interface and update the discourse. While for reasons of space Icannot pursue a detailed discussion in this paper, it might be an issue of pre-supposition and discourse roles: gapping requires that the two clauses involvedshare the same presupposition, while proper adversative coordination requiresan intervention on the presupposition after the first member of coordination.More technically speaking, assuming the movement analysis of gapping (John-son 1996, 2009), two constituents, typically vPs, are coordinated under a sharedTP. Sharing a TP is crucial both for the movement of the verb and of one ofthe subjects. In adversative coordination, full-fledged sentences are coordinated(ForcePs, or Speech_ActPs), with no shared projections whatsoever. The struc-tural minimum required for gapping is not provided.




8. Conclusion

The paper showed that it is possible to analyze the conjunctions in S-C as mor-phologically complex, with their semantic effects fully compositionally derivedfrom the morphologically primitive elements they are composed from. Part ofthe analysis was a novel view at the syntactic and semantic properties of theS-C clitic li, defining it as an element that pairs up an unvalued polarity featurewith a focal element in its scope. One consequence of the proposed analysisis a compositional derivation of disjunctive coordination instead of taking dis-junction as a cognitive and linguistic primitive. I withdraw from discussingparticular consequences of this view, restricting myself to noting that one ex-treme view would be to consider disjunction as a cognitive operation derivedfrom more primitive notions, and the other to consider the analysis presentedin this paper as one of a diachronic rather than synchronic picture of language,i.e., that the morphological complexity of S-C conjunctions is bleached in thecontemporary S-C language.

I argued that the S-C i is the most primitive conjunction, involving a pureaddition, i.e., formation of plurals from a number of conjoined entities, andwithout any special syntactic, semantic or information-structural constraints.All other analyzed conjunctions are more complex, and involve information-structural restrictions, and possibly some additional, polarity-related elements.For this reason, I argued that these other conjunctions are all restricted to co-ordinating bigger structural units: those rich enough to involve polarity- andinformation structure-related components, or more precisely PolPs, MoodPsor CPs.

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, [email protected]

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