15 VP and TP ellipsis: Sentential polarity and information structure

Abstract

VP and TP Ellipsis: sentential polarity and information structureThis paper focuses on two types of predicate ellipsis, namely Verbal Phrase Ellipsis (VPE), also known in the literature as Verb-stranding ellipsis, and Tense Phrase Ellipsis (TPE), also called Stripping or Polarity Ellipsis. It suggests that the polarity-encoding functional category ΣP is involved in the licensing of both types of predicate ellipsis, but only VPE requires that the verb be morphosyntactically associated with the Σ-head. The more restrictive licensing conditions imposed on VPE, relative to TPE, explain its more restricted distribution across languages. At the same time, it permits to account for the correlation between the availability of VPE and a particular type of (typologically rarer) answering system where the bare verb constitutes the unmarked pattern of minimal polar affirmative answer. The paper then concentrates on comparing VP and TP ellipsis in one of the few Romance languages where both types of predicate ellipsis are allowed, viz. European Portuguese, and describes their different articulation with discourse and information structure. The fact that VPE and TPE might not be in free variation in European Portuguese is shown to be a consequence of the different information structure of the elliptical clause in each type of ellipsis. VPE is an instance of single focus (that can be assigned to different constituents) and is subject to a parallelism constraint on contrastive topic structures (Kertz 2013); TPE features double focus bearing on the polarity word and the constituent preceding it.VP ellipsis, TP ellipsis, polarity, answering system, information structure, topic, focus, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan IntroductionThis chapter deals with two types of predicate ellipsis, namely VP Ellipsis (VPE) and TP Ellipsis (TPE, here restricted to what has been known in the literature as stripping or polarity ellipsis). 1 The chapter comprises five sections. In section 2, it is shown that languages that allow VPE and languages that bar it display different patterns of polar answering system. In the languages with VPE the verb by itself may express confirmation or denial, behaving as a polar word in specific pragmatic contexts. Hence, observing the role of VPE in the domain of polar answering systems brings about the interface between syntax and semantics/pragmatics. A number of empirical arguments ranging through different languages are put forth in section 2 to support the idea that VPE and the grammatical expression of 1 I am grateful to Susann Fischer and two anonymous reviewers for their challenging and very helpful comments on a previous version of this chapter. It goes without saying that all shortcomings are mine. Research for this work was funded by FCT -Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within the project WOChWEL (PTDC/CLE-LIN/121707/2010).Martins, Ana Maria (2016). VP and TP Ellipsis: sentential polarity and information structure. In: Susann Fischer and Christoph Gabriel (eds.), Grammatical Interfaces in Romance. Be...

Verb-second and the verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis debate

“…The ungrammatical versions of (33) must then be due to the failure to undergo ellipsis of a constituent larger than a single argument (TP-ellipsis, by our account). This data supports our position that the AE-only reanalysis of main-verb stranding strings is not viable for languages like Kashmiri and Portuguese, which feature elliptical strings stranding both main verbs and auxiliary verbs (Martins 2016;Manetta 2020b). At the very least, verbstranding via ellipsis of a larger constituent must be available in some domains in order to correctly generate dependent tag questions (see also Landau, 2020b: 302).…”

More doubts on verb‐stranding VP ellipsis: Reply to Simpson 2023

“…When it is not, the remnant consists of either the polarity particle or the raised verb or both, nothing else. When contrastive topicalization is added, some constituent is extracted from the TP prior to its elision, landing in spec,PolP (Martins 2016, Gribanova 2017). 7 Note that Pol 0 may be spelled out as a particle or remain null (shading represents ellipsis).…”

“…Second, the contrastive X P reaches its surface position via movement . This is evident from connectivity effects (scope, binding, and case marking) obtaining between that X P and material internal to the elided TP (Merchant 2004, Vicente 2006, Temmerman 2013, Martins 2016, Gribanova 2017, Lipták 2019), as well as island sensitivity of contrastive‐topic fragment answers (Griffiths & Lipták 2014).…”

Missing objects in Hebrew: Argument ellipsis, not VP ellipsis

“…The challenge is to identify this principle. The challenge is even greater because V-stranding ellipsis does seem real in other constructions; most obviously, bare verbal responses to polar questions (Holmberg 2001;Lipták 2013;Martins 2016;Gribanova 2017). Exactly what determines which combinations of ellipsis and V-stranding (or head-stranding more generally) are permitted and which ones are not?…”