Would you please exlain to me why can't we have two main verbs in a sentence in syntax?
Thank you so much
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Sign up to join this communityWould you please exlain to me why can't we have two main verbs in a sentence in syntax?
Thank you so much
(Making this an answer so that I can include images; I can't do that in a comment.)
"In syntax" is pretty vague: there are many different theories of how English syntax works. But in all the ones I've ever heard of, you can coordinate two VPs to get a new VP.
Some theories only allow binary branching, in which case you have to add an extra level of indirection:
And there are various arguments about why one of these ways is better than another. But I don't know of any theory that doesn't allow combining two VPs into a conjoined VP with a conjunction.
(Depending which theory you're using, your trees may not look like this: the root might be a TP or an IP, for example, instead of an S. But I'm going with the simplest model I can think of to show off the bits that are important.)
He sang, and then it rained, until the police arrived, whereupon...
– Adam Bittlingmayer
Oct 4 '19 at 5:29
Actually, it's perfectly possible to have more than one verb in the same clause: He drank, ate, went to bed, slept well.
What is really impossible is to have more than one verb with more than one subject. I think clauses like: "the dog, the cat, the horse growled, purred, whinnied" are impossible in all natural languages. This is computer syntax. A clause like "the dog, the cat, the horse growled, purred, whinnied" must be unzipped into three simple clauses in natural languages.