Coherence and Extraction from Adjuncts in Chinese (original) (raw)

The paper compares asymmetrical extraction from coordinate structures (in English) (that is, violations of the coordinate structure constraint) with asymmetrical extraction from subordinate structures (in Chinese) (that is violations of the adjunct island condition) and argues that these are grammatical if certain discourse requirements, in particular discourse relations (e.g. explanation, Occasion, common topichood etc) are met. These can be specific to the language and the kind of construction , depending also on the means of each language to express the discourse relations (by coordination or subordination).