In defense of verb‐stranding <scp>VP</scp> ellipsis

Simpson, Andrew

doi:10.1111/synt.12261

Cited by 3 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Funakoshi 2016 and Simpson 2023 take (14b–d) to be the decisive facts, drawing the conclusion that VSVPE is a viable option in these languages. However, the contrast in (14) is a puzzle, and any full account should address both parts of it.…”

Section: Negative Sentences: the Source Of Variationmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…These recent arguments are crystallized in Simpson 2023; hence this reply will address them as they are presented in that article. In section 2 I show that contrary to Simpson's claim, focal stress is not a prerequisite for the adjunct‐negating reading, undermining his explanation for the absence of that reading in (1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…If the subject is contrastive and is moved to spec,PolP, the resulting sentence has the form subject–(negation)–V, which is (confusingly) string identical to the output of either AE or VSVPE. This surface ambiguity, I suggest, is the source of the adjunct‐including readings that Funakoshi 2016 and Simpson 2023 focus on, although they fail to take it into account as Manetta 2018 does.…”

Section: Negative Sentences: the Source Of Variationmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The explanation is principled insofar as it directly links the possibility of eliding an adjunct‐including constituent to polarity (mis)match with the antecedent. On Funakoshi 2016's and Simpson 2023's accounts, which appeal to VSVPE in all these scenarios, this link is accidental.…”

Section: Negative Sentences: the Source Of Variationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most importantly, the presence of a third player in the game, polarity ellipsis , should not be ignored. While Funakoshi 2016 and Simpson 2023 contribute to a fuller description of the empirical landscape, they fall short in two respects: (i) they fail to recognize the effect of polarity ellipsis, and (ii) they disregard languages with different profiles from Hindi and Japanese. Manetta 2018's account remedies (i) but is still unable to extend to Hebrew.…”

Section: Negative Sentences: the Source Of Variationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Landau

2023

Syntax

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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.

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Section: Negative Sentences: the Source Of Variationmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Negative Sentences: the Source Of Variationmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Negative Sentences: the Source Of Variationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Negative Sentences: the Source Of Variationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

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

Landau

2023

Syntax

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Verb‐echo answers in Japanese do not call for syntactic head movement: Arguments for a pragmatic account*

Tanabe,

Kobayashi

2024

Studia Linguistica

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This paper tackles the issue of whether syntactic head movement exists in Japanese. Sato & Hayashi (2018) and Sato & Maeda (2021) propose that Verb‐Echo Answers (VEAs), an instance of fragment answers, in Japanese are derived via the so‐called Verb‐stranding TP‐Ellipsis (VTPE; i.e., TP‐ellipsis accompanied by verb‐raising to C), thereby claiming that head movement exists in Japanese as a syntactic operation. In response, this paper argues that pro and Argument Ellipsis (AE) in Japanese sufficiently account for the key observations presented in their works. Specifically, a careful examination of the discourse in each question‐answer pair reveals that the seemingly problematic scope patterns in VEAs do not call for the VTPE analysis. We also show that the unacceptability of voice mismatches in VEAs can be explained by a discourse‐based analysis within the Question Under Discussion framework. Further, we provide an extensive discussion on the alleged evidence against the pro/AE analysis concerning adjunct‐inclusive readings. We show that negative scope reversal effects, which Sato & Maeda (2021) argue occur in VTPE, do not occur between adjuncts and negation in the novel data. Given this, we discuss possible ways to account for the availability of adjunct‐inclusive readings in VEAs with no recourse to VTPE, and suggest avenues for future research. The proposed analyses of VEAs shed new light on intriguing aspects of ellipsis phenomena, which involve complex interactions between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

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Arguments against head‐stranding ellipsis in Japanese: A reply to Funakoshi (2016)

Tanabe,

Kobayashi

2024

Syntax

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Whether syntactic head movement exists in Japanese has been hotly debated because of the strictly head‐final character of the language. This paper addresses this issue, focusing on data regarding null adjuncts. We demonstrate that the head‐stranding ellipsis (HSE) analysis of null adjuncts is not conclusive. To achieve this, we show that null adjuncts are more widely observed than the HSE analysis predicts. Specifically, we provide a new set of data that challenges Funakoshi's (2016) generalization regarding null adjuncts, which he claims his verb‐stranding VP‐ellipsis analysis explains. We also present a novel observation that some null adjuncts take scope over negation, contrary to what the HSE analysis predicts. Furthermore, we show that null adjuncts are derived even if the verb does not raise. Given these findings, we explore alternative analyses of null adjuncts that do not assume head movement. In particular, we discuss the pragmatic enrichment analysis as well as the adjunct ellipsis analysis, and suggest that the distribution of null adjuncts is better analyzed by a pragmatic account in line with Landau (2023). This paper concludes that any arguments for head movement based on the HSE analysis of null adjuncts are inconclusive at best.

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In defense of verb‐stranding VP ellipsis

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

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

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

Verb‐echo answers in Japanese do not call for syntactic head movement: Arguments for a pragmatic account*

Arguments against head‐stranding ellipsis in Japanese: A reply to Funakoshi (2016)

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