Pseudocoordinations in Norwegian and Control Theory

Helge Lodrup

Abstract

Pseudocoordinations (for example sitte og skrive 'sit and write') look like coordinations, but do not have the syntactic properties of coordinations. Their analysis is a classical problem in Scandinavian grammar. In my paper, I argue that pseudocoordinations are not a unitary phenomenon; different first verbs take different constructions. Pseudocoordinations can be complex predicate constructions and raising constructions, but most of them are control constructions. An important problem is how to account for the syntactic differences between pseudocoordination control constructions and ordinary control constructions. I show that these differences follow from the theory of control in Lexical-Functional Grammar, given the assumption that control is obligatory in pseudocoordination control constructions, while it is non-obligatory in ordinary control constructions.