Reconsidering odd coordination in German

This paper investigates why the Coordinate Structure Constraint (CSC) is violable in odd coordination in German. Schwartz’s (1998) analysis successfully handles nominal odd coordination but some cases of verbal odd coordination are problematic for his analysis. This paper offers an alternative analysis of verbal odd coordination, under which the CSC is subject to the Principle of Minimal Compliance, proposed by Richards (1998) on independent grounds. Verbal odd coordination involves V-to-C movement in an ATB-way, which allows the computational system to ignore a violation of the CSC. This paper has two theoretical implications. One is that head movement takes place in the narrow syntax. The other one is that the CSC is defended as a syntactic constraint on overt movement.