Clausal ellipsis

Abstract

This article compares two alternatives to the standard movement-and-deletion approach to clausal ellipsis, which postulates deletion of TP after the remnants of ellipsis are (sometimes exceptionally) A′-moved into the left periphery of the clause. One alternative is the in-situ approach, which denies the involvement of movement in the derivation of clausal ellipsis; it claims that clausal ellipsis can apply to any run-of-the-mill syntactic structure and simply deletes the familiar/given information from the propositional domain of the clause. Another alternative is the selective spell-out approach; it denies the involvement of deletion and states that the remnants undergo regular A′-movement into the specifiers of specific semantically relevant functional projections (CP, FocusP, NegP, etc.), which are subsequently selected for spell-out. This article argues that the selective spell-out approach is superior to the two deletion approaches.

Separability of dependents from VP in English: Beyond the argument/adjunct distinction

“…For example, there are many challenges for the move-and-delete approach to ellipsis remnants (see, e.g. Ott & Struckmeier 2018, Broekhuis & Bayer 2020, Ott & Therrien 2020, Griffiths et al 2023. Additionally, the necessary distinction between argument and adjunct PPs with respect to pseudogapping is not obvious, as reflected in Levin's (1979) explicit choice to exclude PP-remnants from the pseudogapping construction and as reflected in the similar status of (58)-(59).…”