Adpositions and gapping

Abstract

AbstractThe ungrammaticality of prepositional gapping has remained a challenge to the theory of ellipsis since the inception of gapping studies. Given that Russian ambivalent adpositions can be deleted under gapping, the issue becomes even more complicated. In this article, I propose a solution to these issues by analyzing adpositional gapping as head sharing, derived by Parallel Merge. I argue that only heads hosting unvalued uninterpretable features and edge features can be shared. Using this hypothesis, I correctly predict the properties of adpositional gapping.