The Coordinate Structure Constraint: evidence from Irish

Previously.

Ross’s 1967 MIT thesis Constraints on Variables in Syntax introduced, among other things, the Coordinate Structure Constraint, which is a generalization of the intuitive notion that coordinators (in English, “and”, “but”, “or” and so on) coordinate nouns with nouns (“fish and chips”), verbs with verbs (“come and go”) to exclude sentences like “Whose tax did the nurse polish her trombone and the plumber compute?”

While keeping my eyes peeled for examples of non-constituent coordination in Gaelic, and I should note that I have a blogpost in preparation with examples from William Lamb’s Scottish Gaelic, including the constructions that are examples of “cosubordination”, I’ve been reading M?che?l ? Siadhail’s?Learning Irish, which has some examples of what the author calls “idiomatic uses of?agus“. These first five coordinate non-constituents:

Bh? Br?d ann agus ? tinn. (1)

T? C?it ansin agus leabhar m?r aici.?(2)

D’imigh M?irt?n amach agus gan aon ch?ta air.?(3)

Bh? an bosca ansin is m? ag t?ocht abhaile. (4)

Bh? an l? gearr is th? ag imeacht thart mar sin. (5)

(1) coordinates NP + existential ANN with NP + ADJ. (2) coordinates NP + ADV with NP + PP. (3) coordinates ADV with PP. (4) coordinates NP + ADV with NP + small clause. (5) coordinates NP + ADJ with NP + small clause. Sadly there are no counterexamples of uses that are unidiomatic. is also shows up in constructions with chomh (like Gaelic cho, which is similar):

chomh s?sta is a bh? M?irt?n (6)

“as pleased as Martin was”. Here is coordinates ADJ with a direct relative clause.

There are also some non-coordinative-looking uses:

An bhfuil s? m?le as seo go Carna? T? agus deich m?le! (7)

T? m? ag imeacht anois. T? agus mise! (8)

Is maith liom an ?it seo. Is maith agus liomsa! (9)

Any account of coordination in Irish at least has to be able to cope with examples (1) to (6). I hunt on for examples in Gaelic.

An interesting case of coordination

A few weeks ago I spotted this from @BBCAimsir?(the weather in Gaelic) on Twitter:


which said (just in case the embedding stops working at some future date):

Tha i bl?th agus sinn air 20C a ruighinn an Glaschu agus na Criochan.

Literally “It is warm and we have reached 20 degrees Celsius in Glasgow and the Borders”. What is interesting about it is that it’s coordinating two non-constituents, in English “it… warm” and “we… reached”. This is the sort of thing that CCG is good at handling.

I wonder how common non-constituent coordination like this is in Gaelic, though?