In this paper we present a formalism for symbolic negotiation. We regard symbolic negotiation as cooperative problem solving (CPS), which is based on symbolic reasoning and is extended with negotiation-specific rules. The underlying CPS formalism based on linear logic was previously presented in [7]. Here we extend the formalism with symbolic negotiation and coalition formation rules. Moreover, we position symbolic negotiation regarding other distributed problem solving mechanisms. Although there exist currently several formalisms for symbolic negotiation, none of them seems to involve coalition formation.