This paper offers an in-depth analysis of a novel elliptical construction Spanish, dubbed Topic-Remnant Elided Polar Questions (or polar TREQs in short). A detailed examination of polar TREQs will ...provide evidence for the claim that (a) they are a type of TP-Ellipsis, triggered by the presence of an E-feature on C, and (b) the remnant is a topicalized XP that undergoes movement out of the ellipsis site. Furthermore, the analysis of polar TREQs in various contexts (in particular, with respect to so-called connectivity effects) confirms the need of syntactic identity between the linguistic antecedent and the ellipsis site to license ellipsis here. Additionally, this study sheds light on the syntactic structure underlying these constructions, particularly the presence of an intermediate TopP position within the embedded clause. Moreover, an examination of the patterns related to the presence or absence of an overt complementizer in this elliptical construction provides empirical support for Merchant's (2001) Sluicing-COMP Generalization. In summary, this paper not only provides a comprehensive account of the syntactic intricacies of a new elliptical construction in Spanish, but also provides valuable insights into the broader landscape of ellipsis phenomena in this language.
Based on the scope possibilities of pre-DP only relative to modals and their interaction with ellipsis, we provide a new argument (following Benbaji 2021) for a theory according to which only is ...always a propositional operator at LF, despite surface appearance.
Abstract
Advocating a verb‐stranding‐VP‐ellipsis analysis for object‐gap sentences, Andrew Simpson (“In defense of verb‐stranding VP ellipsis”) argues that under negation the “adjunct reading” is ...missing because it depends on focal stress, which cannot be realized on unpronounced material. No such condition holds, I maintain, and the absence of the adjunct reading reflects a syntactic absence: argument‐ellipsis sites contain no VP adjuncts. The adjunct reading emerges in some languages when the antecedent sentence is negative too, an inexplicable contingency for the verb‐stranding‐VP‐ellipsis analysis; in fact, these constructions involve
polarity ellipsis
(of TP), in which VP adjuncts
are
included. However, this derivation is not available to all languages, explaining some crosslinguistic differences in adjunct readings under negation. Finally, an optional adjunct reading may emerge in affirmative object‐gap sentences due to
pragmatic enrichment
, a process sensitive to context in ways that go beyond the predictions of the syntactic analysis advocated by Simpson.
Resumen En este artículo se aboga por la inclusión de la elipsis verbal y nominal en el aula de español para extranjeros, principalmente en niveles intermedios y avanzados. Un análisis cualitativo de ...libros de texto y manuales de gramática del español revela que los procesos de elipsis se ignoran frecuentemente en este tipo de materiales didácticos. Se presenta una descripción lingüística sucinta de los principales procesos elípticos en español (elipsis verbal, nominal, fragmentos y anáfora de complemento nulo) y se propone una serie de actividades didácticas de muestra para la práctica de estas construcciones y su inclusión en materiales pedagógicos. Al mismo tiempo, se defiende la importancia de la llamada gramática del discurso y de los mecanismos de coherencia y cohesión discursiva, de los que la elipsis es un ejemplo, en la construcción del discurso complejo y, en consecuencia, en la enseñanza integral del español como segunda lengua.
Diversos trabalhos sobre a elipse de vP no português brasileiro (PB) afirmam que esta língua permite verb-stranding vP-ellipsis (elipse de vP com encalhe do verbo; doravante VVPE), uma forma de ...elipse de vP em que o verbo lexical é alçado para fora do vP elidido, e assim sobrevive à elipse. O presente trabalho revisita essa afirmação e argumenta que o PB, na verdade, não permite VVPE. O argumento contra a existência de VVPE no PB apresentado neste artigo é construído em dois passos. Primeiro, os argumentos existentes a favor da afirmação de que o PB tem VVPE são reavaliados e se argumenta que não são convincentes. Em seguida, argumenta-se que VVPE sobregera, o que coloca em dúvida a afirmação de que o PB tem VVPE.
Abstract
This remark offers arguments against recent challenges to analyses that postulate verb‐stranding VP ellipsis (Idan Landau, “On the nonexistence of verb‐stranding VP‐ellipsis,” 2020,
...Linguistic Inquiry
51.2.341–365; Satoshi Oku, “A note on ellipsis‐resistant constituents,” 2016,
Nanzan Linguistics
11.56–70). The article defends the verb‐stranding‐VP‐ellipsis hypothesis, arguing that it remains the strongest hypothesis available to account for many instances of ellipsis with null objects in languages such as Hindi, Bangla, and Japanese.
The nominal (often called N′) ellipsis construction in English includes an understood material other than the remaining determiner. This elliptical NP tends to occur in contexts where its antecedent ...exhibits a similar or parallel structure. Popular analyses have derived such a construction with the postulation of the unexpressed materials and deletion operations, referring to the linguistic antecedent. However, our empirical investigation reveals a significant number of attested examples where the understood head noun refers to a discourse correlate, challenging such structure-based and movement operations. In this paper, based on such an empirical observation, we suggest a construction based analysis that allows us to refer to the inherently anaphoric (or deictic) or contextually anaphoric correlate of the understood head. This direction brings about a wider coverage of the empirical data. (Kyung Hee University · Sangmyung University)
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