Head Conjuncts: Evidence from Old Swedish

It is sometimes taken for granted that heads as well as phrases may form coordinate conjuncts. Still, what looks like a head may be a phrase with only the head visible. This loophole is shut, however, when we turn to Old Swedish stylistic fronting. In certain contexts, only single-word expressions are fronted, which leads to the conclusion that head fronting is indeed going on. When these heads originate in a coordinate structure, they must constitute the entire first conjunct, and cannot be part of an elliptic phrasal conjunct; otherwise, the ellipsis is not properly licensed.