Functional Projections of Predicates: Experimental Evidence from Coordinate Structure Processing

This paper reports the results of six experiments involving an on-line self-paced reading task that examine the processing of coordinate small clause predicate phrases versus coordinated arguments NPs. The results have particular significance for the analysis of small clause complement constructions, and support accounts wherein the small clause complement has an Agr projection associated with it. An adequate explanation of the processing of small clause coordination is shown to motivate a new parsing principle, Coordination Feature-matching, which accounts for the longer reading times observed for the coordination of predicates in small clause complements