Ellipsis from Different Points of View
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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 ] ] ]]. -
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. -
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). -
Gapping and Stripping
Gapping and Stripping Gapping and Stripping Kyle Johnson The Oxford Handbook of Ellipsis Edited by Jeroen van Craenenbroeck and Tanja Temmerman Print Publication Date: Dec 2018 Subject: Linguistics, Morphology and Syntax Online Publication Date: Jan 2019 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198712398.013.24 Abstract and Keywords The chapter looks at the main attempts to model two constructions: gapping and strip ping. It reviews the ways in which these constructions are similar, exploring the thesis that they both stem from the same underlying process. One of those shared properties is their restriction to coordinations—a restriction that is not found elsewhere in the menagerie of ellipsis constructions. Methods of tying this restriction to the similarly gap ping/stripping-specific constraint against embedding the ellipsis or its antecedent are ex amined. The chapter focuses on the shortcomings of previous attempts to explain these conditions, and their counter-examples, and points to new directions of analysis that seem promising. Keywords: gapping, stripping, ellipsis, coordination, movement, small conjuncts, large conjuncts 23.1 Introduction THIS chapter looks at two constructions which are sometimes characterized as involving ellipsis. One is known as gapping, a name Ross (1970) suggested. And the other is vari ously known as stripping or Bare Argument Ellipsis.1 An example of gapping is (1), and stripping is illustrated by (2). (1) (2) The second conjunct of (1) is understood to have the same verb that the first conjunct has: likes. Similarly, in the second conjunct of (2), there is understood to be both a verb and a subject, each identical to those found in the first conjunct: Jones likes. -
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. -
The Interaction of Ellipsis and Binding: Implications for the Sequencing of Principle a
MARK BALTIN THE INTERACTION OF ELLIPSIS AND BINDING: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SEQUENCING OF PRINCIPLE A ABSTRACT. This paper argues that Principle A is not ‘an anywhere principle’, contrary to Belletti and Rizzi (1988) and much subsequent work, but must apply relatively late in derivations, perhaps at the end of each phase (Chomsky 2000). Evidence comes principally from the analysis of pseudo-gapping, in which the ellipsis remnant is extracted to a posi- tion outside of the VP which deletes. Anaphors cannot appear as ellipsis remnants when the antecedent is within the deleted material. The interaction of anaphora and ellipsis is mirrored by restrictions on scrambling of anaphors in Dutch object scrambling, and a uni- fied analysis is proposed. The paper draws implications for other theories of constituency, such as Phillips (1996), as well as for the A-status of the ellipsis remnant, contra Jayaseelan (1999). Given that the ellipsis remnant is focused, focus cannot be explicitly represented in syntactic representations, but rather must be interpretive in nature. 1. INTRODUCTION An influential view of Binding Principle A, the principle governing ana- phor binding, holds that it applies whenever it can, rather than at a specific point in the derivation. This view, due originally to Belletti and Rizzi (1988), is based on the well-known fact that subjects of psychological predicates can contain anaphors whose antecedents are contained within the VP, as in (1): (1) That picture of himselfi bothered Johni. Belletti and Rizzi’s analysis posits an initial structure for (1) in which its subject is a complement of bother, asymmetrically c-commanded by the experiencer, John. -
Gapping Is VP-Ellipsis: a Reply to Johnson∗
Gapping is VP-ellipsis: A reply to Johnson∗ Maziar Toosarvandani Massachusetts Institute of Technology October 8, 2012 Abstract Johnson (2009) argues that the gapping — e.g. Some had ordered mussels, and others swordfish— does not arise through VP-ellipsis because gapping has properties that VP-ellipsis does not. He proposes instead that the gap in gapping arises through ‘low coordination’ and across-the-board movement. I first show that Johnson’s across-the-board movement ac- count fails to generate gapping in coordination structures with corrective but (Vicente 2010, Toosarvandani, to appear-b). I then revive a version of the ellipsis account in which VP-ellipsis applies to low-coordination structures. This correctly generates gapping in corrective but sen- tences. Once the information-structural properties of low coordinations are taken into con- sideration— low coordinates must have parallel focus structures— it also derives the unique properties of gapping. 1 Introduction Gapping is the elliptical construction where the locus of finiteness in the clause (T and its host)goes missing—possibly, along with more—in the second and subsequent coordinates of a coordination. This leaves behind one or more remnants:1 (1) Some had ordered mussels, and others swordfish. In (1), T is realized on the perfect aspect auxiliary, which disappears in the second coordinate, along with everything else but the two DP remnants others and swordfish. Gapping bears a striking resemblance to pseudogapping, the elliptical construction in (2), which also strands one or more remnants, though it does not remove T. (2) Some had ordered mussels, and others had swordfish. -
Class 2: Corpus-Based Studies on Ellipsis and English Gapping
Corpus-based studies motivation Previous corpus studies PTB and ellipsis annotation Gapping in PTB Empirical Approaches to Elliptical Constructions Class 2: Corpus-based studies on ellipsis and English gapping Gabriela Bîlbîie1 and Anne Abeillé2 1University of Bucharest [email protected] 2Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7 [email protected] LSA 2017 Linguistic Institute 10 July 2017, University of Kentucky 1 / 76 N Corpus-based studies motivation Previous corpus studies PTB and ellipsis annotation Gapping in PTB Class 2 – Content 1 Corpus-based studies motivation 2 Previous corpus studies Meyer (1995) Greenbaum & Nelson (1999) Harbusch & Kempen (2011) 3 PTB and ellipsis annotation 4 Gapping in PTB Missing material Remnants 2 / 76 N Corpus-based studies motivation Previous corpus studies PTB and ellipsis annotation Gapping in PTB Plan 1 Corpus-based studies motivation 2 Previous corpus studies Meyer (1995) Greenbaum & Nelson (1999) Harbusch & Kempen (2011) 3 PTB and ellipsis annotation 4 Gapping in PTB Missing material Remnants 3 / 76 N Corpus-based studies motivation Previous corpus studies PTB and ellipsis annotation Gapping in PTB Ellipsis – a challenge for grammar Ellipsis : a form/meaning mismatch (significatio ex nihilo) 1 part of the material necessary for the interpretation is missing in the syntactic structure (’incomplete’ syntax) ; 2 the missing material is recovered from an antecedent in the context. Descriptive problem : A mass of elliptical constructions, on the basis of several criteria, e.g. syntactic function of the missing material (head or dependent), syntactic context (coordination, subordination ; dialogue), ellipsis directionnality (forward vs. backward ellipsis). ⇒ Sometimes, unstable terminology. Theoretical problem : A plethora of competitive analyses, with respect to the level at which reconstruction of the missing material takes place : syntactic reconstruction vs. -
Catenae in Morphology
Catenae in Morphology Thomas Groß Aichi University, Nagoya, Japan [email protected] takes the backseat with just 8 pages. Valency Abstract theory is characterized by putting valency- bearing lexical items at center stage. Assuming This paper argues for a renewed attempt at morpholo- that non-lexical material is somehow subsumed gy in dependency grammar. The proposal made here by lexical material seems on a logical trajectory. is based on the concept of the “catena” proposed by But research in typology, foremost Bybee (1985), Authors (in press). The predecessor to this notion was has confirmed that affixes as expressions of va- the “chain” introduced by O‟Grady (1998), and em- lency, voice, aspect, modality, tense, mood, and ployed by Osborne (2005) and Groß and Osborne (2009). In morphology and morphosyntax, a morph person obtain in a specific linear order (or hie- catena is A MORPH OR A COMBINATION OF MORPHS rarchy), and developments in generative gram- THAT IS CONTINUOUS WITH RESPECT TO DOMINANCE. mar during the 1980‟s emphasized the domin- This concept allows for a parsimonious treatment of ance structure of the IP/TP, where such affixes morphology on the surface. The fact that no additional are thought to be located. Similar statements also terms and concepts are necessary for the analysis of concern NP structure: if case or plural is ex- morphological data is highly desirable because it pressed by morphs, then these morphs appear in makes a fluid transition from syntax to morphology peripheral position, an indication that they domi- possible. This paper introduces the relevant depen- nate their nouns.