Problems of German VP Coordination

In this paper, we present the implementation in the German ParGram LFG of verb phrase (VP) coordinations involving conjunction reduction and/or right node raising. We show how the computationally expensive approach proposed by Maxwell and Manning (1996) can be adopted for VP coordinations in a computationally efficient way so that many of these coordinations, which previously did not receive a correct analysis, are now analyzed soundly. We also show that the new rules obviate the need for a recursive right-branching VP rule and make it possible to define a flat VP rule instead. This is desirable for a number of reasons, including the definition of both hard and soft constraints on constituent order in the VP domain (needed in particular for generation).