UNIFYING ELLIPSIS AND PRONOMINALIZATION IN JORDANIAN ARABIC*

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, I discuss ellipsis inside Jordanian Arabic (JA) DPs. I show that both Nominal Ellipsis (NE) and pronominalization are attested in JA. I argue following Saab & Lipták (2016) that ellipsis takes place at different heights in the extended nominal projection via the presence of an [E]llipsis feature (Merchant 2001, 2005). In particular, I argue that there are two types of ellipsis in the DP: Noun Phrase Ellipsis (NPE), which targets the noun alone; and (ii) Classifier Phrase Ellipsis (ClPE), which targets a bigger structure than the noun. I show that the application of NPE gives rise to a stranded affix scenario, and as such, an anaphoric element is inserted as a last resort strategy, yielding pronominalization. By contrast, no such stranding takes place with ClPE since the head which contains the stranded affix is contained in the ellipsis site. In support of this view, I analyze ellipsis inside simple DPs and DPs containing numerals, showing that ellipsis could be NPE or ClPE.