Exocentric - A Note About Coordinate Structures

A Note About Coordinate Structures

While exocentric structures have largely disappeared from most theoretical analyses of standard sentence structure, many theories of syntax still assume (something like) exocentric divisions for coordinate structures, e.g.

and arrived.

She and .

or go to that conference?

The brackets each time mark the conjuncts of a coordinate structure, whereby this coordinate structure includes the material appearing between the left-most bracket and the right-most bracket; the coordinator is positioned between the conjuncts. Coordinate structures like these do not lend themselves to an endocentric analysis in any clear way, nor to an exocentric analysis. One might argue that the coordinator is the head of the coordinate structure, which would make it endocentric. This argument would have to ignore the numerous occurrences of coordinate structures that lack a coordinator (asyndeton), however. One might therefore argue instead that coordinate structures like these are multi-headed, each conjunct being or containing a head. The difficulty with this argument, however, is that the traditional endocentric vs. exocentric distinction did not foresee the existence of multi-headed structures, which means that it did not provide a guideline for deciding whether a multi-headed structure should be viewed as endo- or exocentric. Coordinate structures thus remain a problem area for the endo- vs. exocentric distinction in general.