Great was their and my amazement!

Let's start with a simple noun phrase: my amazement. My parser analyzes it as follows. The word my creates a frame with type ME and contributes possessor attribute to possessive construction. The word amazement creates a frame with type AMAZE and contributes head attribute to the same possessive construction. Now that both head and possessor attributes are defined, the construction links them with arg1 attribute:

A.type=ME

B.type=AMAZE

B.arg1=A

It's quite similar with their amazement:

A.type=THEY

B.type=AMAZE

B.arg1=A

Now let's parse their and my amazement. The semantics I want to get is this:

A.type=THEY

B.type=ME

C.member1=A

C.conj=and

C.member2=B

D.type=AMAZE

D.arg1=C

I want their, my and amazement to preserve their functionality. This means that after their and my there should be a possessive construction whose possessor points to the conjunction frame C. So it's the word and which should do this, there are no other candidates.

Currently and puts the parser into a special state. In this state, every subsequent contribution is intercepted and analyzed whether it can be a conjunct. A contribution can be the right operand of coordination if there was a similar contribution to the left of it (similar in the same sense as with ellipsis). When a similar contribution is found, the parser takes both left and right contributions and merges them. In this particular case, the left contribution had possessive.possessor=A, the right one — possessive.possessor=B. While merging, a new frame C is introduced, a composite over A and B. Now the possessor attribute of the merged possessive construction points to C instead of A or B. The updated contribution is applied to the parsing state, so that then, when amazement comes, the result will be precisely as wanted. That's it.

This is the core idea. In my parser, conjuncts don't connect constituents or any static structure. They connect contributions, i.e. the changes made to the parsing state. Merging two changes results in one merged change. It's quite powerful and allows for some interesting things like non-constituent coordination. But that's another story.