Ellipsis Constructions Research Articles

A discourse-based approach to concessive <em>although</em>-stripping in English

This study investigates concessive stripping in English, a phenomenon where the so-called Stripping or Bare Argument Ellipsis (BAE) occurs in although-clauses. This elliptical construction has at least two sub-patterns: although-stripping and negative although-stripping. Merchant (2003) and Wurmbrand (2017) argue that although-stripping undergoes clausal ellipsis to contribute to the propositional meaning of a remnant, supported by syntactic connectivity effects. However, the corpus data we have identified indicate that connectivity effects can often be overridden. Based on this observation, we suggest a discourse-based approach in which the ellipsis construction is directly generated with no derivational processes and interpreted with reference to the contextual information in question

Clause types, intonation and stranded embedded clauses

In this paper, I examine the properties of a construction in Korean speech that has not received much attention in the literature. I refer to the construction in question as the ‘stranded embedded clause’ (SEC). SECs are a special type of echoed utterance, where an utterance in the form of an embedded clause is repeated for various reasons. The characteristic properties of the SEC involve the fact that there can be a mismatch between the type of the clause indicated by the clause type marker that they contain and the actual illocutionary force of the utterance that is indicated by its prosody. The complementizer is also obligatory, despite the fact that no matrix clause element shows up—hence, the name stranded embedded clause. I propose a deletion-based analysis of SECs, where they start out as a full-fledged embedded clause in a complex sentence and undergo movement, followed by deletion of the rest of the clause. It should be noted that this is essentially how fragment answers (and some other ellipsis constructions) have been analysed in the literature. Indeed, I show that there is a parallelism between SECs and fragment answers, which I argue provides support for the deletion-based approach to the former.

스페인어 부가의문문의 도출에 대한 통사적 분석

The goal of this paper is to deal with the derivation of Spanish tag questions, which have received little attention in generative linguistics. First, although scholars have been assuming tag questions to be the products of ellipsis, we point out that in Spanish, predicate ellipsis constructions and tag questions show a contrast with respect to the appearance of modal verbs, and therefore argue that it is not clear whether Spanish tag questions are derived from predicate ellipsis. Second, we argue that attempting to account for the derivation by adopting Culicover(1992)''s bi-clausal analysis faces several empirical problems. As an alternative, we provide a mono-clausal analysis of the construction. We argue that its basic structure is CP and that its surface structure is derived by moving the polarity particle to C and the host sentence to the CP-adjoined position respectively. We show that this mono-clausal analysis can simply account for why neither personal pronouns nor verbs can appear in tag: because both are included within the lower copy of the moved host sentence that is deleted at PF. Finally, based on the analysis of the writing survey conducted on learners, we suggest what should be particularly emphasized to learners when teaching them about tag questions.

Preposition stranding under sluicing: Evidence from Hijazi Arabic

Based on data from numerous languages, such as English, Frisian, and Danish, Merchant (2001) proposes the preposition stranding generalization (PSG), which states that only languages that allow preposition stranding under wh-movement also allow preposition stranding under sluicing. The availability of this generalization has been the subject of a number of studies. Two contrasting views have been identified in the literature. The first view confirms the availability of the PSG in a number of different languages. The other view claims that this generalization is untenable as there exist non-preposition stranding languages that allow preposition stranding under sluicing. Our aim in this paper is to examine the availability of the PSG in the dialect of Hijazi Arabic (HA). Based on empirical data from HA on the syntactic behavior of preposition stranding under wh-movement and under sluicing, we argue that this PSG does not hold in HA. It has been observed that HA is like Emirati Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, and Indonesian in that it disallows preposition stranding under wh-movement but allows it under sluicing. Therefore, the results of this research may contribute to the ongoing discussions on the phenomenon of sluicing in linguistic theory to help obtain a more universal analysis of this interesting ellipsis construction.

Reduced NP comparatives in Korean and their implications.

In this paper, I examine a novel type of comparative construction in Korean, namely, reduced NP comparatives (RNC), and consider its implications. On the surface, RNC may appear to be a case of the usual NP comparative construction in that two NPs are involved. But, unlike typical NP comparatives, the element bearing the marker of the standard of comparison in RNC does not directly participate in the comparison, i.e., there is a mismatch between the standard and pivot. I argue this is due to the fact that the standard is reduced to leave only the pivot on the surface, hence the name “reduced” NP comparatives. I also argue that one of the factors that determines the availability of RNC is the notion of comparability, which is based on whether or not the compared elements can be associated with the same scale, where the scale is part of the semantics of the gradable predicate (Cf. Kennedy 2009). The interesting twist is that RNC is possible only if the relevant elements are not comparable with each other, i.e., they should denote different types of objects that cannot be associated with the same scale. Adopting Merchant’s (The syntax of silence: sluicing, islands, and the theory of ellipsis. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, Linguist Philos 27:661–738, 2004, J Greek Linguist 9:134–164, 2009, among others) move-and-delete approach to various ellipsis constructions, I propose a move-and-delete analysis of RNC, where the pivot undergoes movement, followed by deletion of the rest of the standard. The discussion also has implications for NP-ellipsis in Korean.

ELLIPSIS OF DISCOURSE ABOUT COVID-19 IN THE KOMPAS NEWSPAPER OPINION COLUMN

This study aims to describe the ellipsis construction or removal of language elements in the discourse about corana virus diseases (Covid-19) in the Kompas newspaper opinion column. The discourses analyzed were sourced from Kompas opinions published from March to April 2020. The method used in data collection was the refer to method (read), which was applied through the note taking technique. The stages of data collection in this study, namely the inventory, identification and classification of data. The method of data analysis in this study is the agih method, which is applied with the technique of fade and replace for direct elements. Stages of data analysis in this study, namely reduction, interpretation, presentation, and discussion of the results of data analysis. The results of this research data analysis show that the ellipsis construction in the discourse about Covid-19 in the Kompas newspaper opinion column consists of the subject ellipsis, the subject ellipsis as well as the predicate, and the object ellipsis in equivalent (coordinative) compound sentences. Meanwhile, the ellipsis compound compound (subordinate) occurs in the function of the subject, both in the child clause (clause) and in the parent clause (parent sentence). Both in equivalent compound sentences and in multilevel compound sentences, the elements in each function are written in words both cataphoric and anaphoric.

Light verb ellipsis constructions in Korean

Abstract Drawing on the fact that the light verb ha- ‘do’ in Korean may or may not be elided in negative sentences, I offer a syntactic analysis for the light verb ellipsis in which the various types of light verbs belong to distinct heads, such as v, Appl, and Voice. Hierarchically, they occupy different syntactic positions. Thus, the light verb ellipsis ascribes itself to a syntactic hierarchy. The ellipsis behavior of various types of the light verb distinguishes them in a way that implicates structure, not other factors, such as semantics. The syntactic analysis put forth here constitutes substantive evidence supporting the configurational theory of argument structures in which different theta roles can be mapped into various syntactic positions.

On Certain Adjacency Effects in Ellipsis Contexts

In this article, I show that crosslinguistically, there is a recurring pattern in various ellipsis constructions (e.g., fragment answers, right-dislocation, right-node raising, VP-ellipsis), to the effect that parts of a remnant can be additionally deleted under adjacency to a deletion site, often ignoring constituency. I argue that the phenomenon in question follows from the fact that PF deletion, being an operation in the component determining linear order, targets linearized strings, similarly to the fact that movement, being an operation in the component determining hierarchical relations, targets constituents.

The acquisition of the quantitative pronoun by English and French learners of L2 Dutch: An experimental study based on an elicited imitation task

It has been argued that an elicited imitation task gives better insights into the L1 acquisition of the Dutch quantitative pronoun er than a picture elicitation task. In this paper the results of an elicited imitation task submitted to adult L1 French and L1 English learners of L2 Dutch are presented and compared to earlier results of a grammaticality judgment task. Like Dutch and unlike English, French uses a quantitative pronoun in noun ellipsis constructions with a numeral. Earlier results revealed that in the grammaticality judgment task there was no significant difference between the two groups of L2 learners in their acceptance of er, although this was predicted on the basis of possible transfer from their L1. In the elicited imitation task, however, the L1 English learners repeated er significantly less often than the L1 French learners. This can be attributed to the different nature of the two types of test.

Condition C reconstruction, clausal ellipsis and island repair

This paper makes two related but distinct claims concerning the relationship between islandhood and the clausal ellipsis construction known as stripping. The first claim is that (at least a certain version of) this construction is island insensitive: no unacceptability results from having a correlate inside an island. This claim is supported by evidence from a formal acceptability judgment study. The second claim concerns the question of how to best account for this phenomenon of island- insensitivity in stripping: we claim that this island-insensitivity is best explained via the notion of island-repair, i.e., the ellipsis site involves the structure of island yet the ellipsis operation ameliorates island violations as opposed to the alternatives that have been dubbed evasion approaches. By this we mean that the island-insensitivity cannot be explained by positing a smaller, non-island structure in the ellipsis site; while this approach does of course explain the lack of an island effect, we show that it is incompatible with other facts about the crucial example sentences. If we instead assume that movement out of an island is grammatical if the island is properly contained inside a clausal ellipsis site, then positing a complete island structure inside the ellipsis site can explain all the properties of these crucial examples.

Another way to avoid islands

The notion of island repair in ellipsis constructions has received much attention. Existing analyses typically suggest that in island repair contexts, an element undergoes movement, inducing an island violation, and then the violation is removed by deleting the portion of the structure that contains the island. It has been observed that island violations do not arise in the Fragment Answer construction in Korean, whose derivation has also been argued to involve movement and deletion. In other words, the construction also manifests the island repair phenomenon. In this paper, I explore an alternative analysis of the absence of island effects in Fragment Answers in Korean without appealing to the notion of island repair. Assuming the movement and deletion analysis, I argue that the absence of island effects in the construction in question is a consequence of the interaction between two independently motivated processes, i.e., Pied-Piping in the sense of Cable (Linguist Inq 41:563–594, 2010a, The grammar of Q: Q-particles, wh-movement, and pied-piping, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010b) and Extra Deletion in the sense of An (J East Asian Linguist 25:313–350, 2016a). The gist of the proposal is that in the relevant contexts, instead of allowing illegitimate extraction from an island, the whole island itself undergoes movement and is subsequently reduced by deletion, leaving the focused phrase on the surface, which induces the facade of island repair. I also show that the current analysis straightforwardly accounts for a parallelism among constructions that are quite different in nature, i.e., Fragment Answers, gapless Right Dislocation, and Right Node Raising, which cannot be captured by existing approaches to the respective constructions. Thus, the parallelism provides strong evidence in support of the alternative analysis of island repair proposed in this paper.

An ERP Study of Ellipsis Resolution in Korean

Park, Myung-Kwan and Chung, Wonil. 2018. An ERP study of ellipsis resolution in Korean. Language and Information, 22.1, 29-56. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prediction/integration of syntactic structure during sentence processing, employing the construction that allows a TP ellipsis or Sluicing-like interpretation in Korean. To this aim we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from Korean native speakers while they read ellipsis constructions where the syntactic context allows or disallows remnants/ survivors (mis)matching with their explicit/implicit correlates in terms of Case/case (postposition) particle, also reflecting voice (mis)match between the antecedent and the ellipsis clauses. The Korean speakers were able to predict clausal syntactic structure on the basis of the antecedent clause and integrate it into the ellipsis site, thereby quickly detecting voice match/mismatch, as suggested by an ERP difference between matched and mismatched remnants/survivors neighboring the ellipsis site.

Antecedent-contained clausal argument ellipsis

The aim of this paper is to argue for a particular analysis of null clausal arguments in terms of ellipsis. It is first illustrated that null clausal arguments have underlying syntactic structures that are subject to ellipsis. The main and novel observation for this claim is that null clausal arguments exhibit the effect of the parallelism constraint that other ellipsis constructions like verb phrase ellipsis are also subject to, along the line of Takahashi (Proceedings of FAJL 6: formal approaches to Japanese linguistics, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, Cambridge, pp 203–213, 2013). It then examines a hitherto unexplored construction, called antecedent-contained clausal argument ellipsis, where a null clausal argument appears to be properly contained by its antecedent. Although the construction can be readily accommodated by assuming the ellipsis process that directly elides arguments (argument ellipsis), it raises serious difficulties for its alternative analysis that employs the ellipsis process targeting a VP whose head has evacuated it (verb-stranding VP-ellipsis). This paper thus provides a novel case where the argument ellipsis analysis is required, no matter how well the verb-stranding VP-ellipsis analysis accommodates other null argument phenomena.

Not Voice but Case Match Matters in VP Ellipsis and Pseudogapping of English

This paper develops a Case/case-theoretic account for what Merchant (2008) calls voice mismatch in ellipsis constructions of English. Merchant (ibid.) reports that VIP ellipsis as an elision of smaller size VP allows voice mismatch, but Pseudogapping and Sluicing as an elision of bigger size vP/TP do not. However, Tanaka (2011) argues against Merchant`s dichotomy in voice mismatch between VP ellipsis and Pseudogapping, reporting that voice mismatch in both types of ellipsis is permissible or not while interacting with what Kehler (2000) calls discourse coherence relations between ellipsis and antecedent clauses. Departing from Kehler`s (2000) insight, we suggest that vP undergoes ellipsis in a resemblance discourse relation, but VP does so in a cause / effect discourse relation. Given the asymmetry in the size of ellipsis in tandem with discourse relations, we argue that since Accusative as well as Nominative Case is checked outside VP, the VP to be elided can meet the identity condition on ellipsis with its antecedent VP as the object element in the former and the subject one in the latter or vice versus have not been Case-checked yet, thus being identical in terms of Case-feature at the point of derivation building a VP.

Subjacency and MaxElide in English VP Ellipsis Constructions

Subjacency and MaxElide in English VP Ellipsis Constructions

The syntax of Why-Stripping

This study investigates a clausal ellipsis construction involving the adverbial wh-phrase why and a non-wh-remnant, hereafter Why-Stripping. We show that Why-Stripping exhibits movement properties such as connectivity effects in the same way as Sluicing (with argument wh-phrases) and Stripping, and claim that Why-Stripping involves movement of the focused phrase (e.g. Mary) followed by clausal ellipsis. Furthermore, based on the fact that Why-Stripping does not show strict locality restrictions, unlike Sluicing with why, we claim that why in Why-Stripping is base-generated in the Spec_CP position while Sluicing with why involves adjunct wh-movement. According to this view, there are two types of why: one that moves and the other that does not move. It is shown that the latter induces focus association and participates in Why-Stripping. Thus, the investigation of Why-Stripping contributes to revealing the nature of the syntax of why itself.

Born empty

Chinese seems to allow argument ellipsis in object but not subject positions according to interpretive contrasts between null subjects and objects. It has been claimed that this contrast can be captured by allowing only a null subject to be a pro, which is licensed by agreement. The presence of agreement means the absence of argument ellipsis. This line of analysis would require Chinese to have subject agreement. However, it will be shown that this language does not have agreement. Moreover, there are constructions disallowing missing objects, challenging the available analyses. It will be argued that these complex facts, including the noted subject/object asymmetry and the impossibility of missing objects in various constructions, can be accommodated if a base-generated true empty category is possible when a pro is not available. Interestingly, the arguments supporting this proposal would lead us to claim that VP-ellipsis should be the result of a deletion operation; i.e., not all ellipsis constructions are derived via the same mechanisms.

Children’s Knowledge of Ellipsis Constructions in Mandarin Chinese

This study investigated 4-year-old children's knowledge of the structural constraints on ellipsis constructions in Mandarin Chinese, focusing on the structural difference between verb phrase (VP) ellipsis and null object constructions. In Mandarin Chinese, if the antecedent clause of a VP-ellipsis structure contains an adverbial modifier, this adverbial modifier must be recovered at the elided site in the second clause. However, if the antecedent clause of a null object construction contains an adverbial modifier, the reconstruction of this adverbial modifier at the elided site is not necessary. Two experiments were conducted to examine whether young Mandarin-speaking children are sensitive to this structural difference between the two ellipsis constructions. The results show that children exhibited adult-like performance in both experiments. This is evidence that young Mandarin-speaking children have knowledge of the structural difference between VP-ellipsis and null object constructions with regard to adverbial recovery. We interpreted the findings in conjunction with previous research as evidence that children's knowledge of the structural constraints on ellipsis constructions is innately specified.

The Syntactic Integration of Appositives: Evidence from Fragments and Ellipsis

The goal of this squib is to explain an intriguing data set involving appositives and fragment answers, thereby providing support for the idea that appositives, and by extension parentheses more generally, are related to the host clause in syntax, via parenthetical coordination.

Syntactic Identity in Sluicing: How Much and Why

Research on sluicing has not yet reached consensus on whether the identity condition on this ellipsis construction is syntactic or semantic. Evidence from Chamorro and English is presented that over and above semantic identity, sluicing requires limited syntactic identity. The limited syntactic identity condition involves argument structure on the one hand and abstract Case on the other. This approach is shown to account for a range of novel and familiar sluicing patterns in the two languages. It also provides new evidence for the idea that the Chamorro antipassive is an implicit argument construction.