Chapter 4 - The representation of coordinator meanings

Abstract

This chapter provides the analysis of coordination introduced in terms of abstract logical operators. It shows several advantages of the correlational approach and provides a common semantics for the coordination of both phrases and clauses, as well as for the discourse coherence of the juxtaposed sentences. The coordination of every major category is possible, which produces some possibilities such as: nominal phrases, common noun phrases and determined noun phrases, and clauses known as the complementizer phrases. In addition, it is argued that all coordination can be understood as expressing a degree of correlation between (at least) two vectors. For the coordination of phrases, one vector is the denotation of the coordinated linguistic category and the other is the vector denoting the linguistic category which the coordinated category applies, which is given by the grammar. For the coordination of clauses, the vectors are those denoted by the two (or more) coordinated clauses. The choice of correlation is mandated by the hypothesis that it is implemented neurologically by Hebbian learning and perhaps by synchronization of oscillating cells or cell assemblies.