For the past six decades, Chomsky has repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that unbounded, unstructured sequences as in “John is tall, happy, hungry, easily distracted, proud of his son, … and bored with TV” defy analysis within standard models of syntactic composition. The problem posed by this kind of construction is that the sequence of XPs is ‘flat,’ showing no signs of hierarchical organization; at the same time, each XP conjunct within the sequence is internally structured. Since the imposition of structure is the very raison d’être of recursive Phrase-structure Grammar/Merge, neither type of model can generate such sequences barring infinitely many production rules or n-ary Merge, respectively. I suggest that the fundamental problem posed by unbounded, unstructured sequences can be avoided once we abandon the assumption that bona fide sequences are formed by the generative procedure. Instead, I argue that they are formed in discourse as paratactic sequences of elliptical expressions, akin to dislocated elements and other parentheticals. The analysis captures the key properties of sequences: conjuncts qua elliptical fragments can be added indefinitely (unboundedness); and no structure is imposed on the sequence, since each XP conjunct is a structurally independent expression. By the same token, the account rationalizes the ‘list intonation’ of sequences, with each XP conjunct flanked by prosodic breaks and bearing sentential stress. At the same time, we reconcile the ‘flatness’ of sequences with the hierarchical organization within individual conjuncts, each the surface remnant of a structured expression.