Gapping and Stripping
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Syncom.Sluicing
SynCom Case 98 Sluicing Jason Merchant University of Chicago August 2003 Contents 1. Introduction 2. Movement vs. non-movement approaches 3. Theoretical consequences 3.1. Non-movement approaches 3.2. Movement approaches 4. Puzzles and prospects 4.1. Sluicing-COMP generalization puzzles 4.2. Sluicing in non-wh-in-specCP languages 4.3. Multiple sluicing 4.4. Swiping 5. Conclusion References Glossary 1. Introduction Sluicing is the ellipsis phenomenon illustrated in (1), in which the sentential portion of a constituent question is elided, leaving only a wh-phrase remnant. (1) a. Jack bought something, but I don’t know what. b. A: Someone called. B: Really? Who? c. Beth was there, but you’ll never guess who else. d. Jack called, but I don’t know {when/how/why/where from}. e. Sally’s out hunting — guess what! f. A car is parked on the lawn — find out whose. The sluices in (1) should be compared to their non-elliptical counterparts in (2), with which they are synonymous. (2) a. Jack bought something, but I don’t know what he bought. b. A: Someone called. B: Really? Who called? c. Beth was there, but you’ll never guess who else was there. d. Jack called, but I don’t know {when/how/why} he called. e. Sally’s out hunting — guess what she’s out hunting! f. A car is parked on the lawn — find out whose is parked on the lawn. Sluicing appears to be widespread cross-linguistically (unlike VP-ellipsis), and may in fact be found in some form or another in every language (like nominal ellipses, 1 gapping, stripping, and fragment answers). -
Gapping: in Defense of Deletion
Gapping: In Defense of Deletion Elizabeth Coppock Northwestern University 1 Introduction Gapping refers to the following type of construction: (1) [α John likes caviar] and [γ Mary beans]. Typically, Gapping involves two such conjoined clauses, where the second clause contains no pronounced verbal material, as in (1). Following usual terminology, I call the missing material the Gap, the first clause (e.g. α) the antecedent clause, the second clause (e.g. γ) the gapped clause, and the pronounced elements of the gapped clause remnants. Assuming that the Gap is present somehow in the syntax, we have three potential analyses, depending on the nature of the Gap. We may interpret it as (i) a null pro-form, (ii) a deleted element, or (iii) a trace of movement. I immediately rule out possibility (i), following Hankamer and Sag (1976), who argue that Gaps are Surface Anaphors as opposed to Deep Anaphors (i.e. null pro-forms), based on their Island sensitivity and the fact that they require a linguistic antecedent. The second idea (deletion) is as old as the term Gapping. The first detailed investigation of the phenomenon was in Rosss 1967 dissertation, where he coined its name, and gave a deletion analysis. In 1976, Sag suggested that the remnants A'-move out of the gapped clause before deletion, preserving the hypothesis that operations (such as deletion) affect entire constituents. My proposal is essentially Sags, differing significantly only in the assumption that remnants adjoin to VP, rather than at the sentence level, as in (2).1 (2) John likes caviar, and [VP Mary1 [VP beans2 [VP t1 likes t2 ] ] ]]. -
Treatment of Multiword Expressions and Compounds in Bulgarian
Treatment of Multiword Expressions and Compounds in Bulgarian Petya Osenova and Kiril Simov Linguistic Modelling Deparment, IICT-BAS Acad. G. Bonchev 25A, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria [email protected] and [email protected] Abstract 2012)), we will adopt the Multiword Expressions The paper shows that catena represen- classification, presented in (Sag et al., 2001). They tation together with valence information divide them into two groups: lexicalized phrases can provide a good way of encoding and institutionalized phrases. The former are fur- Multiword Expressions (beyond idioms). ther subdivided into fixed-expressions, semi-fixed It also discusses a strategy for mapping expressions and syntactically-flexible expressions. noun/verb compounds with their counter- Fixed expressions are said to be fully lexicalized part syntactic phrases. The data on Mul- and undergoing neither morphosyntactic variation tiword Expression comes from BulTree- nor internal modification. Semi-fixed expressions Bank, while the data on compounds comes have a fixed word order, but “undergo some degree from a morphological dictionary of Bul- of lexical variation, e.g. in the form of inflection, garian. variation in reflexive form, and determiner selec- tion” (non-decomposable idioms, proper names). 1 Introduction Syntactically-flexible expressions show more vari- Our work is based on the annotation of Multi- ation in their word order (light verb constructions, word Expressions (MWE) in the Bulgarian tree- decomposable idioms). We follow the understand- bank — BulTreeBank (Simov et al., 2004). We ing of (O’Grady, 1998) that MWEs have their in- use this representation for parsing and analysis of ternal syntactic structure which needs to be rep- compounds. BulTreeBank exists in two formats: resented in the lexicon as well as in the sentence HPSG-based (original - constituent-based with analysis. -
Some Observations on the Hebrew Desiderative Construction – a Dependency-Based Account in Terms of Catenae1
Thomas Groß Some Observations on the Hebrew Desiderative Construction – A Dependency-Based Account in Terms of Catenae1 Abstract The Modern Hebrew (MH) desiderative construction must obey four conditions: 1. A subordinate clause headed by the clitic še= ‘that’ must be present. 2. The verb in the subordinate clause must be marked with future tense. 3. The grammatical properties genus, number, and person tend to be specified, i.e. if the future tense affix is underspecified, material tends to appear that aids specification, if contextual recovery is unavailable. 4. The units of form that make up the constructional meaning of the desiderative must qualify as a catena. A catena is a dependency-based unit of form, the parts of which are immediately continuous in the vertical dimension. The description of the individual parts of the desiderative must address trans-, pre-, and suffixes, and cliticization. Catena-based morphology is representational, monostratal, dependency-, construction-, and piece-based. 1. Purpose, means and claims The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the Hebrew desiderative construction. This construction is linguistically interesting and challenging for a number of reasons. 1. It is a periphrastic construction, with fairly transparent compositionality. 2. It is transclausal, i.e. some parts of the construction reside in the main clause, and others in the subordinated clause. The complementizer is also part of the construction. 3. The construction consists of more than one word, but it does not qualify as a constituent. Rather the construction cuts into words. 4. Two theoretically 1 I want to thank Outi Bat-El (Tel Aviv University) and three anonymous reviewers for their help and advice. -
An Asymmetry in Voice Mismatches in VP-Ellipsis and Pseudogapping
An asymmetry in voice mismatches in VP-ellipsis and pseudogapping Jason Merchant University of Chicago [email protected] Final revision for Linguistic Inquiry, March 29, 2007 VP-ellipsis and pseudogapping in English show a previously unnoticed asymmetry in their tolerance for voice mismatch: while VP-ellipsis allows mismatches in voice between the elided VP and its antecedent, pseudogap- ping does not. This difference is unexpected under current analyses of pseu- dogapping, which posit that pseudogapping is a kind of VP-ellipsis. I show that this difference falls out naturally if the target of deletion in the two cases differs slightly: in VP-ellipsis, a node lower than Voice is deleted, while in pseudogapping a node containing Voice is deleted. This analysis further- more accounts for a new observation concerning the distribution of floated quantifiers in these two constructions as well.1 1Thanks to Kirsten Gengel, Kyle Johnson, and the two LI reviewers for very helpful comments. 1 1 Voice mismatches It is well known that VP-ellipsis in English tolerates mismatches between the voice of the elided constituent and that of its antecedent, in both directions. Typical examples are those in (1) and (2) (the (a) examples from Kehler 2002:53; see also Sag 1976:17, 75, Dalrymple et al. 1991, Hardt 1993, Johnson 2001, and Arregui et al. to appear for further examples, discussion, and qualifications). (1) Passive antecedent, active ellipsis a. This problem was to have been looked into, but obviously nobody did. <look into this problem> b. The system can be used by anyone who wants to. -
On Pseudogapping in HPSG*
On Pseudogapping in HPSG* Dong-woo Park Department of Laguage and Literature, Seoul National University 599 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-742, Korea [email protected] Abstract. This study investigates the constraints imposed on the pseudogapping in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). Based on the existing schema to account for coordination and gapping, a new pseudogapping schema in coordination structures is proposed in this paper. In the process of capturing the constraints, new DOM lists are added and an existing DOM list is divided into two DOM lists depending on the feature of elements in each domain. Furthermore, new features SEP and INC are introduced. SEP is used for distinguishing prepositions which should be located in the same domain with the following NPs from those which can be separated from the following NPs. INC feature determines whether overlapping adverbs are in non-empty lists or not. Pseudogapping occurs not only in coordination structures, but in comparative or subordination structures. Thus, this paper introduces a pseudogapping schema that can be applied to all structures mentioned above. Keywords: DOM lists, SEP feature, INC feature, pseudogapping schema. 1 Introduction English has ellipsis like these examples. (1) a. Sluicing: She read something, but she won’t say what [vP ]. b. Verb Phrase Ellipsis: She read something and he did [vP ] too. c. Pseudogapping: She’ll read something to Sam, but she won’t [vP ] to Billy. d. Gapping: Some read something to Sam and others [vP ] to Billy. e. Right Node Raising: She deliberately [vP ], and he accidentally, read something. -
What VP Ellipsis Can Do, and What It Can't, but Not Why*
What VP Ellipsis Can Do, and What it Can’t, * but not Why Kyle Johnson University of Massachusetts Amherst VP Ellipsis is the name given to instances of anaphora in which a missing predicate, like that marked by “)” in (2), is able to find an antecedent in the surrounding discourse, as (2) does in the bracketed material of (1). (1) Holly Golightly won’t [eat rutabagas]. (2) I don’t think Fred will ), either. We can identify three sub-problems which a complete account of this phenomenon must solve. (3) a. In which syntactic environments is VP Ellipsis licensed? b. What structural relation may an elided VP and its antecedent have? c. How is the meaning of the ellipsis recovered from its antecedent? These tasks tend to run together, as we shall see; but there is no immediate harm in treating them separately. 1. LICENSING THE ELLIPSIS The first of the problems presents itself with pairs such as (4). (4) I can’t believe Holly Golightly won’t eat rutabagas. a. I can’t believe Fred won’t ), either. b. *I can’t believe Fred ), either. These contrasts are typically thought to involve licensing conditions that the environment to the left of the ellipsis invoke. The contrast between (4a) and (4b), for instance, indicates that the ellipsis site must be in construction with, or perhaps governed by, a member of “Aux,” where these can be understood to be just those terms that are able occupy the highest of the functional projections which clauses are made up of. The modal, won’t, is an Aux, as is the infinitival to and the auxiliaries have, be and do in (5). -
The Syntax of Comparative Constructions : Operators, Ellipsis
Julia Bacskai-Atkari The Syntax of Comparative Constructions Operators, Ellipsis Phenomena and Functional Left Peripheries Universitätsverlag Potsdam Julia Bacskai-Atkari The syntax of comparative constructions Julia Bacskai-Atkari The syntax of comparative constructions Operators, ellipsis phenomena and functional left peripheries Universitätsverlag Potsdam Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de/ abrufbar. Universitätsverlag Potsdam 2014 http://verlag.ub.uni-potsdam.de/ Am Neuen Palais 10, 14469 Potsdam Tel.: +49 (0)331 977 2533 / Fax: 2292 E-Mail: [email protected] Zugl.: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2014 Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Gisbert Fanselow, Department Linguistik, Universität Potsdam Prof. Dr. István Kenesei, Department English Studies, University of Szeged Datum der Disputation: 25.02.2014 Dieses Werk ist unter einem Creative Commons Lizenzvertrag lizenziert: Namensnennung 4.0 International Um die Bedingungen der Lizenz einzusehen, folgen Sie bitte dem Hyperlink: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/de/ Online veröffentlicht auf dem Publikationsserver der Universität Potsdam URL http://pub.ub.uni-potsdam.de/volltexte/2014/7125/ URN urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-71255 http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-71255 Zugleich gedruckt erschienen im Universitätsverlag Potsdam ISBN 978-3-86956-301-5 Acknowledgements This dissertation could not have been written without the funding pro- vided by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) through the Collaborative Research Centre SFB-632 (Information structure: The linguistic means for structuring utterances, sentences and texts) at the Linguistics Department at University of Potsdam, where I held a short- term PhD scholarship in 2012/2013 (working in project A1 in Potsdam and partially also in B4 at the Humboldt University of Berlin), and where I am currently employed as a research fellow (project Z). -
8 Ellipsis in Construction Grammar 8.1 Introduction
8 Ellipsis in Construction Grammar Adele E. Goldberg and Florent Perek 8.1 Introduction Ellipsis constructions are formal patterns in which certain syntactic structure that is typically expressed is omitted. Some of the most commonly discussed ellipsis constructions along with an attested example of each are provided in Table 8.1. All examples in quotes within and following Table 8.1 come from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (Davis 2008). Table 8.1 Commonly discussed constructions that involve ellipsis Verb phrase ellipsis ‘French kids eat spinach and ours can too.’ Sluicing ‘He said that I was “different.” He didn’t say how.’ Gapping A: ‘You made me what I am today.’ B: ‘And you me.’ Stripping ‘George Greenwell was a patriot but not a fool.’ Comparatives ‘His front teeth seemed to protrude more than Henry remembered.’ Every language balances the need to be expressive with the need to be sufficiently easy to produce. These two major functional principles (described by Goldberg 1995: 67 1 as Maximize Expressive Power and Maximize Economy) give rise to different networks of learned constructions in different languages via general processes of grammaticalization or constructionization (Paul 1889; Hopper and Traugott 2003; Traugott 2014; Bybee et al. 1994; Fried 2009). This chapter emphasizes the shared communicative motivation of ellipsis constructions that leads to cross-linguistic similarities and certain predictable functional constraints (section 8.2), while we also emphasize the fact that ellipsis is licensed by a system of motivated constructions; i.e., learned pairings of form and function. Specific constructions readily capture a range of restrictions on form and function, including those related to semantics, discourse context, register, genre, and dialect. -
Three Types of Ellipsis∗
Three types of ellipsis∗ Jason Merchant Abstract The term ‘ellipsis’ can be used to refer to a variety of phenomena: syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. In this article, I discuss the recent comprehensive survey by Stainton 2006 of these kinds of ellipsis with respect to the analysis of nonsententials and try to show that despite his trenchant criticisms and insightful proposal, some of the criticisms can be evaded and the insights incorporated into a semantic ellipsis analysis, making a ‘divide-and-conquer’ strategy to the properties of nonsententials feasible after all. 1. Introduction A character in Carlos Fuentes’s 2002 novel The Eagle’s Throne (trans. Kristina Cordero; Random House: New York, 2006) says with self-disdain and melan- choly (p. 93): Did you know I’ve learned to speak like an Anglo-Saxon, without articles or context? “Exactly.” “Done.” “Nothing.” “Careful.” “Perfect.” ∗This paper owes an enormous debt to a large number of people over the years since I first began working on it, but special mention must be made of Rob Stainton, whose work was the original impetus for it and whose comments at Rutgers and in Paris in 2007 led to numerous improvements. Thanks also to Ernie Lepore, François Recanati, Jason Stanley, and the participants in the Leverhulme Foundation workshop organized by Laurence Goldstein at Canterbury in 2008. “Warned.” “Face consequences.” I say these things, nothing else. As it turns out, such seemingly telegraphic speech is by no means limited to the Anglo-Saxon world. The question is just what such utterances could and do mean ‘without context’ and with, and what exactly a speaker who utters such phrases says, means, and conveys. -
Catena Operations for Unified Dependency Analysis
Catena Operations for Unified Dependency Analysis Kiril Simov and Petya Osenova Linguistic Modeling Department Institute of Information and Communication Technologies Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Bulgaria {kivs,petya}@bultreebank.org Abstract to its syntactic analysis. On the other hand, a uni- fied strategy of dependency analysis is proposed The notion of catena was introduced origi- via extending the catena to handle also phenomena nally to represent the syntactic structure of as valency and other combinatorial dependencies. multiword expressions with idiosyncratic Thus, a two-fold analysis is achieved: handling the semantics and non-constituent structure. lexicon-grammar relation and arriving at a single Later on, several other phenomena (such means for analyzing related phenomena. as ellipsis, verbal complexes, etc.) were The paper is structured as follows: the next formalized as catenae. This naturally led section outlines some previous work on catenae; to the suggestion that a catena can be con- section 3 focuses on the formal definition of the sidered a basic unit of syntax. In this paper catena and of catena-based lexical entries; sec- we present a formalization of catenae and tion 4 presents different lexical entries that demon- the main operations over them for mod- strate the expressive power of the catena formal- elling the combinatorial potential of units ism; section 5 concludes the paper. in dependency grammar. 2 Previous Work on Catenae 1 Introduction The notion of catena (chain) was introduced in Catenae were introduced initially to handle lin- (O’Grady, 1998) as a mechanism for representing guistic expressions with non-constituent structure the syntactic structure of idioms. -
Transformational Grammarians and Other Paradoxes Abstract Keywords
Barcelona, 8-9 September 2011 Transformational Grammarians and other Paradoxes Thomas Groß Aichi University 1 Machihata-cho 1-1, Toyohashi-shi, Aichi-ken, Japan [email protected] Abstract This paper argues that morphs can/should be granted node status in tree structures. Most theories of morphology do not do this. For instance, word-based morphologies (Anderson 1992 and others) see inflectional affixes appearing post-syntactically, producing a specific word form based on paradigmatic rules. On the other hand, derivational affixes attach prior to syntax. So-called “bracketing paradoxes” (Williams 1981, Pesetsky 1985, Spencer 1988, Sproat 1988, Beard 1991, Stump 1991) such as transformational grammarian concern primarily derivational affixes (here: -ian). If a theory can avoid bracketing (or structural) paradoxes by maintaining an entirely surface-based account, then this theory should be preferred over competing theories that posit different levels or strata in order to explain the same phenomenon. This contribution demonstrates that such a surface-based account is possible if the catena is acknowledged. The catena is a novel unit of syntax and morphosyntax that exists solely in the vertical dominance dimension. Keywords Bracketing paradox, catena, morph catena 1 Introduction (Williams 1981:219f) is credited with introducing “bracketing paradoxes” to theoretical linguistics. He puts forth examples such as the following: (1) a. hydroelectricity (2) a. Gödel numbering (3) a. atomic scientist For example (1a) Williams posits the next structure: (1) b. [hydro-[electric-ity]] The problem with (1b), Williams realizes, is that the structure cannot provide the adjective hydroelectric because the prefix and the root do not appear within a bracket that excludes the suffix.