On the Russian Hybrid Coordination Construction

The phrase adjacent to ‘i ’ is prosodically contrasted, and is interpreted as an unexpected undergoer of the event. The focused phrase can be displaced, as shown in (2b), which shows that no coordinate constituent is formed. If this is what is going on in (1), then one can argue that HC does not exist. However, the examples in (1) can be interpreted without the focus reading. They can occur unfocused, unmarked, and without any particular prosodic contour. Our informants report that there are preferential orderings of conjuncts, but that the reverse orders are usually also acceptable. Moreover, these co-arguments cannot occur discontinuously without the focus reading. This can be seen in HC of n-words, which do not allow for the focus-i readings: