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What is the grammatical or syntax term for a sentence structure in which there are more than one subject or more than one object continuously in the sentence?

Example 1: In this sentence, the there are three objects.

He studies English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Example 2:

In this example there are two subjects:

The boy and the girl ate the food.

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    The syntactic process of deleting repetitious material in conjoined English clauses or phrases is called Conjunction Reduction in the grammatical trade. – jlawler Mar 11 '18 at 16:34
  • The usual term is 'distributive coordination'. In ex 1 the direct object comprises a coordination of three noun phrases, and in ex 2 the subject comprises a coordination of two noun phrases. It's called 'distributive coordination' because the studying applies equally to "English, Spanish and Portuguese" and the property of eating food applies to the boy and the girl individually. – BillJ Mar 11 '18 at 19:17
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Not sure about how it is called in grammar of English, but "English, Spanish and Portuguese" is just the direct object, and "the boy and the girl" is just the subject. Each structure can be formed by more than one word and by more than one real world item.

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  • That's true, but should be a specific name for those cases with more than one subject or object. – Ubiquitous Student Mar 11 '18 at 13:09
  • Maybe. I hope with more time somebody will come with a better answer. – Pere Mar 11 '18 at 13:32
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It is called: conjunction-reduction.

In transformational grammar it is a rule that reduces coordinate sentences, applied, for example, to convert "John lives in Ireland and Brian lives in Ireland" into "John and Brian live in Ireland". (Collins)

Credit: @jlawler in the comment.

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  • The usual term is 'distributive coordination'. – BillJ Mar 11 '18 at 19:19
  • @BillJ How could you explain 347 results on Google for ""distributive coordination" if it is indeed so usual term? – Ubiquitous Student Mar 11 '18 at 20:15
  • In addition, I would like to see one respected source (such Collins which stated my things) which is incompatible to Collins things. – Ubiquitous Student Mar 11 '18 at 20:24
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    In general, if BillJ suggests a grammatical term, it comes from Huddleston and Pullum. – WavesWashSands Mar 12 '18 at 4:38

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