A robust generalization about coordinate structures is that X and Y may be conjoined in position P if and only if each of X and Y alone may occur in P. In particular, different grammatical categories (e.g., the NP a Republican and the AdjP proud of it ) may be coordinated in a position that allows for either (e.g., Pat is [a Republican and proud of it] ; Sag et al. 1985). Apparent violations of this generalization are sometimes taken as evidence for an asymmetric structure of coordination, where a single conjunct determines categorial features of the coordinate structure. Bruening and Al Khalaf 2020 and Bruening 2023 posit that one such violation involves coordination of AdvPs and AdjPs in prenominal positions that apparently do not allow for AdvPs alone; e.g., The [Once and Future] King (a book title) is grammatical, while the once king alone is claimed either to be ungrammatical or to involve a hypothetical compound once king that only a minority of English speakers accept. On the basis of rich attested data and acceptability judgment experiments, we demonstrate that adverbs such as once , now , soon , and twice combine with nouns in regular syntax, rather than via hypothetical compound forming processes. Hence, constructions exemplified by The Once and Future King do not violate the discussed generalization and do not provide an argument against the symmetric nature of coordination.

Bruening and Al Khalaf (2020) deny the possibility of coordination of unlike categories. They use three mechanisms to reanalyze such coordination as involving same categories: conjunction reduction, super-categories, and empty heads. We show that their proposal leaves many cases of unlike category coordination unaccounted for, and we point out various methodological, technical, and empirical problems that it faces. We conclude that the so-called Law of the Coordination of Likes is a myth. Instead, all conjuncts must satisfy any external restrictions on the syntactic position they occupy. Such restrictions may be rigid, resulting in categorial sameness, but when they are underspecified or disjunctive, category “mismatches” may arise.

This squib argues that adverbs can act as primary predicates. In Polish, a relatively large class of adverbs are frequently used in predicative constructions when the subject of predication is an InfP (infinitival phrase) or a CP referring to abstract objects: event kinds or facts. This requirement of a purely verbal rather than nominal subject of predication is the main difference between predicative adverbs and predicative adjectives, explaining contrasts between their syntactic behavior in extraction and coordination. Predicative adverbs usually express attitudes toward event kinds or facts and often combine with dative experiencers; in the case of InfP subjects, dative experiencers obligatorily control the subject.