conjunction-reduction in the sentence

My work ethic together with belief in my ability has led to progress.

Can linking phrases with together with/combined with/along with/as-well-as be seen as using conjunction-reduction so that the first "my" applies to "belief" too?

If ethic and belief were connected by "and" then certainly it would apply but the question is whether it does for the above linkers without other modifications to the sentence.

Solution 1:

I don't think so. I think of the question as really being whether "together with" can connect two nouns to make another noun, as "and" can. Or, less clearly, "with" can. So the structure of the subject in your example, if "together with" can truly function like "and", would be: [NP my [N [N work ethic] together-with [N belief in my ability] ] ] , where I label brackets by suffixing them with a category. That is, "together with" would be a conjunction which connects the nouns "work ethic" and "belief in my ability" to make the noun "work ethic and belief in my ability", the whole of which is in construction with the determiner "my" to make the NP subject.

But this parsing does not work for me, personally. It would be okay using just "with" instead of "together with".

(This concerns the original example: "My work ethic together with belief in my ability has led to progress.")