Remarks on the Midway Conjunction Analysis of RNR Constructions

Abstract

Park (2009, 2010) proposes a midway conjunction approach (MCA) to account for right node raising (RNR) constructions where an RNRed constituent is interpreted as the combination of two distinct elements,each associated with one of the conjunct clauses; these constructions pose a serious problem for the most popular RNR analyses such as ellipsis approaches and multiple dominance approaches. The MCA provides a unified analysis for different types of RNR constructions successfully to a certain degree, but it faces some non-trivial theoretical and empirical problems. This paper discusses these problems.