This section discusses relative clauses with coordinated antecedents. The discussion is mainly limited to conjunctive coordination with enand and disjunctive coordination with ofor. Some examples are given in (378) and (379). Further we will focus on those features of coordination that are relevant to the form and interpretation of the relative clause.

In (378) and (379) we are dealing with restrictive relative clauses, but we will see that modification by non-restrictive relative clauses is usually acceptable as well. The fact that the coordinated antecedents in these examples involve indefinite noun phrases and are headed by nouns of the same gender (non-neuter) is also accidental; coordinated antecedents may just as well involve definite noun phrases and, at least under certain circumstances, be headed by nouns of a different gender. The discussion will be restricted to cases with at most two conjuncts, despite the fact that in principle the number of coordinated elements is unlimited (although in practice their number is restricted by the limited capacity of short-term memory). Examples with three conjuncts with the conjunctive coordinator en are given in (380a) and (380b) for restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses. Example (381) gives comparable examples with the disjunctive coordinator ofor.

Conjunctive and disjunctive coordination will be discussed separately in Sections 16.3.2.4.2 and 16.3.2.4.3, respectively. In both sections we will discuss constructions with different types of coordinated antecedents, e.g. coordinated plurals and coordinated singulars. However, Section 16.3.2.4.1 will begin with a more general discussion of the scope of the relative clause, i.e. the fact that relative constructions with a coordinated antecedent can lead to ambiguity concerning the size of the antecedent of the relative clause.