Unbalanced case and the syntax of coordination

Abstract

Coordinate structures seem to display a mix of both asymmetric and symmetric properties. As a result, individual theories of the syntax of coordination roughly divide into two classes: those that argue for an asymmetric syntax and those that adopt a symmetric syntax. This paper investigates an apparently asymmetric property of coordination, unbalanced case, where not all conjuncts in a coordinate structure realize the same case. I examine data from Bosnian/Croatian/ Serbian which provide evidence of a first-conjunct effect, where the acceptability of an example depends on the ability of the first conjunct to realize the case licensed on the coordinate structure. Despite this case asymmetry, I show that the data are compatible with theories that argue for symmetric syntax, which have gained traction in recent work. The proposed analysis relies on a theory of concord as realization and a postsyntactic condition on case adjacency.