A Theory of Coordinate Structure Formation and “Across-the-Board Movement”

This paper offers a new analysis of “Across-the-Board (ATB)-movement” that is based on a particular theory of coordinate structure formation.  It proposes an operation for forming coordinate structures that can conjoin not only (i) syntactic objects that have not been merged with any other syntactic objects (i.e. roots) but also (ii) syntactic objects that have already been parts of larger syntactic objects (i.e. non-roots), which I dub Coordinate Structure Formation (CSF).  It is then proposed that “ATB-movement” should be taken to be a result of application of CSF of the type (ii).  To support this hypothesis, it will be shown (a) that an element to be “ATB-moved” has two (or more) occurrences at early stages of the derivation, one occurrence each in the two or more (constituents that later become) conjuncts, (b) that each of these occurrences of the element to be “ATB-moved” is moved successive cyclically within a constituent that later becomes a conjunct but they are later unified into one occurrence, and (c) that the stage of the derivation where they are unified can be identified with the stage of the derivation where the relevant conjunction structure is formed.