Dependency Structure of Binary Conjunctions(of the IF..., THEN... Type)

The dependency surface-syntactic structure is proposed, within the Meaning-Text framework, for binary conjunctions of the IF–THEN type; e.g.: IF→Y, THEN←X A universal typology of conjunctions is sketched, and three examples of English binary conjunctions are given. Binary conjunctions are “discontinuous” phrasemesidioms, collocations and formulemes that have to be considered together with their actants, since there are no direct syntactic links between their components. Full lexical entries for two Russian binary conjunctions are presented, supplied with linguistic comments, and deep-syntactic rules ensuring the expansion of a deep-syntactic binary conjunction node into the corresponding surface-syntactic tree are illustrated. 1 The Syntactic Structure of a Binary Conjunction This paper examines subordinating and coordinating binary conjunctions (or correlative subordinators/coordinators, as they are known in the literature: Quirk et al. 1991: 935–941, 999– 1001). The typical examples are the subordinating conjunction IF..., THEN... and the coordinating conjunction EITHER..., OR... The discussion is carried out within the Meaning-Text approach (see Mel’čuk 1974, 2012, 2016b). In sentence (1) dependency relations between lexemes are obvious, except for THEN, the second component of the conjunction IF..., THEN...: (1) If A→and→B are→equal, then B←follows→C. The dependency for THEN is proposed in what follows. Without THEN the superordinate clause can linearly precede or follow the subordinate clause with IF; but with THEN it can only follow. This gives the idea to make this THEN dependent on IF: IF–r→THEN; as a result, the binary conjunction IF..., THEN... can be stored in the lexicon exactly in the form of this syntactic subtree. Such a description had been tacitly accepted for almost half a century: • In Mel’čuk 1974: 231, No. 31, (e), the surfacesyntactic relation [SSyntRel] r between IF and THEN was called “1st auxiliary.” • In Mel’čuk & Pertsov 1987: 331, No. 19.1, it was rebaptized “binary-junctive.” • In Iomdin 2010: 43, it appears under the name of “correlative SSyntRel.” • In Mel’čuk 2012a: 143, No. 51, it is “correlativeauxiliary.” However, this syntactic description of binary conjunctions contradicts the definition of surface-syntactic dependency (or, more precisely, that of surface-syntactic relation), which was advanced in Mel’čuk 1988: 130–144 and has been used as such since; see its newer formulations, for instance, in Mel’čuk 2009: 25–40 and Mel’čuk 2015b: 411–433. In order to lay bare this contradiction, only the first part of this definition—namdely Criterion A—is needed, strictly speaking. Nevertheless, to facilitate the task of the reader I will cite here the whole definition—that is, the full set of criteria for SSyntRels. (Of course many substantial explanations and interesting special cases have to be bypassed.) Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling 2017), pages 127-134, Pisa, Italy, September 18-2