Subject gaps in coordination at the syntax-pragmatics interface

Abstract German features a special coordinate structure in which the second conjunct contains a subject gap, resulting in the asymmetric coordination of a verb-second clause and a verb-initial clause. In this paper, coordination with subject gaps is compared with normal phrasal coordination. Both types of coordination show asymmetries between the conjuncts, including the occupation of the clause-initial position, the omission of non-subject elements, the scope of adverbial constituents, asymmetric extraction and the events described in the conjuncts are naturally connected. Observing the similarities between them in terms of structure and interpretation, I argue that coordinate structures share a unified asymmetric syntactic structure, and coordination with a subject gap is derived from phrasal coordination with a shared subject in the sentence-initial position. The fronted non-subject constituent in the coordination with a subject gap is the result of asymmetric extraction from the first conjunct to the sentence-initial specifier position, which is licensed by its differentiated information structure.