Abstract
This paper investigates the reason why aggressively non-D-linked items such as wh-the-hell (WTH) are allowed in swiping, but not in sluicing. Investigating the potential syntactic, semantic and prosodic licensors of WTH in sluicing and swiping in the British English variety, we conclude that syntactic or semantic constraints cannot be the source of the difference. Instead, we propose a novel prosodic account in which the WTH must satisfy the prosodic licensing condition that it cannot bear nuclear accent. We show that this is satisfied in swiping, but not in sluicing contexts. On the basis of the novel findings of an acceptability rating study of swiping, which reveal that both ‘given’ and ‘new’ prepositions are equally acceptable for British English speakers, we argue that the preposition is accentuated in this elliptical construction because it is structurally the deepest element. The licensing condition on WTHs in sluicing and swiping is therefore not mediated directly by the conditions on ellipsis, but by the particular prosodic distribution that a WTH happens to have in sluicing and swiping. We extend the account to similar constructions in Dutch.
Highlights
SLUICING is ellipsis of a Tense Phrase (TP) to the exclusion of a single wh-constituent (Ross 1969), illustrated in (1a) below, in which [1] We would like to thank the editors and two anonymous referees of the Journal of Linguistics, three reviewers of Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, as well as the audience of the Ellipsis across Borders Conference (Sarajevo 2016), and Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, Marcel den Dikken, Lynn Frazier and James Griffiths for discussions and suggestions for the material in this paper
In this paper we have investigated the reasons why a WTH is licit in swiping but not in sluicing in British English
Considering the syntactic and semantic characteristics of sluicing/swiping, we discussed whether the dichotomy in the acceptability of WTHa is sourced from a conflict between the syntactic/semantic properties of sluicing/swiping and syntactic/semantic licensing conditions on WTHs
Summary
SLUICING is ellipsis of a Tense Phrase (TP) to the exclusion of a single (in some cases multiple) wh-constituent (Ross 1969), illustrated in (1a) below, in which [1] We would like to thank the editors and two anonymous referees of the Journal of Linguistics, three reviewers of Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, as well as the audience of the Ellipsis across Borders Conference (Sarajevo 2016), and Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, Marcel den Dikken, Lynn Frazier and James Griffiths for discussions and suggestions for the material in this paper. We investigate the reason why aggressively non-D-linked items (e.g. the hell; hereafter THs) that follow a wh-item (e.g. what the hell; hereafter WTHs) are allowed in swiping, but not in sluicing, a puzzle that has been noted by many before us (Merchant 2001, Den Dikken & Giannakidou 2002, Sprouse 2006, Hartman & Ai 2009, van Craenenbroeck 2010b). (2) The puzzle: WTH is allowed in swiping but not in sluicing (a) John fixed the car, but I don’t know what the hell with.
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