A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

232 Chapter 14 Coordination and more

[21] Hefelt [tired. and depressed. and listless].

ii They offered us a choice of [red wine or white wine or beer].

(c) Correlative coordination

Although the first coordinate is never introduced by a coordinator, it can be marked
by one of the determinatives both, either, and neither, paired respectively with the
coordinators and, or, and nor, yielding correlative coordination:

[22] [Both the managing director and the company secretary] have been arrested.

ii It's one of those movies that you 'll [either love or hate].

III [Neither Sue nor her husband] supported the plan.^4

Tw o prescriptive grammar notes

1. Both is restricted to two-coordinate constructions. Around 1 900, usage books began to
   claim that this was also true of either and neither, but the evidence does not support them.


2. Both, either, and neither are often found displaced from their basic position in one
   direction or the other. Thus we find phrases like both to [the men and their employers],
   where both is displaced to the left: the more basic order would be to [both the men and
   their employers], with both immediately before the first coordinate. We also find phrases
   like rapid changes [ill either the mixed lig,uor or in the effluent], with either displaced to
   the right: the basic order would be rapid changes either [ill the mixed lig,uor or in the
   effluent]. Most people accept the displaced versions without noticing them, but some pre­
   scriptive grammarians insist that all displacements are errors.

5 Layered coordination

Subject to a suitably refined condition along the lines of [12], a coordi­
nate can belong to virtually any syntactic category. And that means a coordinate can
itself be a coordination:

[23] [[Kim works in a bank and Pa t is a teacher], but [Sam is still unemployed]].
11 Yo u can have [[pancakes] or [ggg and bacon]].
III [[Laurel and Hardy] and [Fred and Ginger]] are my fa vorite movie duos.

Here we have layered coordination: one coordinate structure functioning as a
coordinate within a larger one. The outer square brackets enclose the larger coordi­
nation, with the inner brackets enclosing the coordinates within it; underlining then
marks the coordinates at the lower level.

In [i) the larger coordination has the form X but Y; the Y is just a clause, Sam is

still unemployed, but the X is a coordination of the two underlined clauses. At the

4 This illustrates the usual pattern for neither, but sometimes or rather than nor is found paired with it,
as in She was constrained by neither fashion � conformity.