Gapping as Constituent Coordination

A number of coordinate constructions in natural languages conjoin sequences which do not appear to correspond to syntactic constituents in the traditional sense. One striking instance of the phenomenon is afforded by the "gapping" construction of English, of which the following sentence is a simple example: (1) Harry eats beans, and Fred, potatoes Since all theories agree that coordination must in fact be an operation upon constituents, most of them have dealt with the apparent paradox presented by such constructions by supposing that such sequences as the right conjunct in the above example, Fred, potatoes, should be treated in the grammar as traditional constituents, of type S, but with pieces missing or "deleted".