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Noun-noun coordination in English and functional structure in the nominal domain

Paper · 2026 · Andrew McInnerney

Summary

This short theoretical paper (a squib) uses one corner of English syntax to weigh in on the NP-vs-DP debate, i.e. whether nominal phrases are headed by the noun or by functional heads above it. The phenomenon is the coordination of two bare singular count nouns, such as brother and sister. With ordinary determiners, these coordinations act plural. They take plural verb agreement, can be subjects of collective predicates, and can antecede plural pronouns and reciprocals. Yet they also combine with each and every, which reject morphological plurals, and then they require singular agreement. The author rules out ellipsis-based explanations and concludes that the coordination itself carries no number feature. Number must come from a separate functional head, a Num projection, above the coordinated NPs. On this view, each/every select a bare, numberless NP, and the singular form only looks like the bare form. The result supports positing functional structure in nominals. It holds under the assumption that English agreement is purely formal.

Key points

  • With determiners like the/our/my, noun-noun coordinations pass every plurality diagnostic tested: plural verb agreement, collective predicates (met, are alike), plural reflexives, and each other.
  • With each/every, the same coordinations are acceptable and take only singular agreement (Each man and woman is…). Plural agreement is ungrammatical, and reciprocal predicates fail.
  • Both conjunction-reduction and quantifier-deletion analyses are rejected. Coordinated full QPs (each man and each woman) permit plural agreement, but the noun-noun version does not.
  • Proposed structure: [DP D [NumP Num(SG/PL) [NP NP and NP]]]. Each/every take a bare NP directly, and plural -s reflects Num PL. Joint-reading cases like my spouse and best friend is use Num SG.
  • Rejected or deferred alternatives: a special coordination number feature (pl&) is called ad hoc, and an HPSG semantic-agreement account is left for future work. Other quantifiers (no, neither, either, any) need or, not and.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. The number of "N and N" is decided by the determiner layer above the coordination, not by the conjunction itself, so a fixed rule like "coordination means plural" is wrong.
  • I2. Formal number marking and real-world plurality are separate quantities: scissors is plural in form but one object, and my spouse and best friend is names one person.
  • I3. Every bone and joint quantifies distributively over the members of both noun sets, not over a single group.
  • I4. The paper argues entirely through diagnostic minimal pairs (collective predicates, reflexives, reciprocals, agreement), each tested against singular, plural, and coordinated variants.
  • I5. Ellipsis explanations are tested by asking what agreement the supposed full form would allow and checking whether the surface form matches it.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (tree): Agreement-based consistency checks and repair rules should consult the determiner. each/every plus coordinated nouns should license a singular verb rather than flag an error.
  • I2 (world): Entity creation should count referents from meaning (a joint vs split reading) and treat verb agreement only as evidence. A singular verb after a coordination hints that both nouns may denote one entity.
  • I3 (world): When building quantified states, expand each/every + coordination into a distributive statement over the union of both classes. This blocks collective or reciprocal readings for such subjects.
  • I4 (learn): Turn these triples into a small negative-control test suite. It can check whether the parser and frame layers treat coordinations correctly in each determiner context.
  • I5 (back): When generating or compressing text, collapsing "each X and each Y" into "each X and Y" changes which verb forms and predicates are allowed. The generator should re-check agreement and reciprocals after such reductions.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓University of MichiganAnn Arbor · United States86 works · 15,493 citations

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 5The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 17,450 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 17,296 worksPsychology · 1,649 worksExperimental and Cognitive Psychology · 930 worksDevelopmental and Educational Psychology · 523 works

🧭 Topics 1Research subjects and languages the work is about.English · 2,379 works

Cite

Cite as Andrew McInnerney. 2026. Noun-noun coordination in English and functional structure in the nominal domain. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.16995/glossa.24173

@article{mcinnerney2026noun,
  title = {{Noun-noun coordination in English and functional structure in the nominal domain}},
  author = {Andrew McInnerney},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.16995/glossa.24173},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.24173}
}

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