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From: norvig@comet.menlo.harlequin.com (Peter Norvig)
Subject: Re: Context Sensitivity
In-Reply-To: qobi@qew.cs's message of 1 Feb 95 15:58:27 GMT
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Date: Fri, 3 Feb 1995 00:51:28 GMT


In article <QOBI.95Feb1105826@qew.cs> qobi@qew.cs (Jeffrey Mark Siskind) writes:

   Essentially, the claim is that sentences like:

    Alice, Bob, and Claire drove Melanie, Norman, and Oliver to Xanadu, York,
    and Zanzibar respectively.

   are grammatical while variants like

   *Alice and Bob drove Melanie, Norman, and Oliver to Xanadu, York,
    and Zanzibar respectively.

   are not. 
   --
       Jeff (home page http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/DCS/Personal/Siskind.html)


The counter-claim is that this is a semantic, not syntactic property,
because sentences like

Contestants 1 through 3 drove Melanie, Norman, and Oliver to Xanadu, York,
and Zanzibar respectively.

are grammatical, even though the subject is only one NP, not 3.

-- 
Peter Norvig                          
Harlequin Inc.                        Email: norvig@harlequin.com
1010 El Camino Real, Suite 310        Phone: 415-833-4022
Menlo Park CA 94025                   Fax:   415-833-4111
