Pseudogapping, Parallelism, and the Scope of Focus

Thoms, Gary

doi:10.1111/synt.12122

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 51 publications

(71 reference statements)

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“…It has been well known since N. Levin (1986) that non-comparative PG is more restricted than comparative PG (in particular, the latter allows a wider range of categories as remnants). Because of this, it has been suggested (in particular by Thoms 2016) that non-comparative and comparative pseudogapping require separate analyses. If this is true, then our experiments might not directly shed light on the more restrictive non-comparative case.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remnant connectivity in pseudogapping: Experimental evidence for a direct generation approach

Poppels¹,

Miller²

2022

J. Ling.

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This paper reports the results of two acceptability judgment experiments that examine the effect of PP remnants with mismatching correlates in the antecedent clause (either a PP, with a distinct preposition, or an NP) on the acceptability of pseudogapping as well as non-elliptical controls. Across both experiments, three novel findings emerge: First, utterances with mismatching PPs across the ellipsis clause and its antecedent were consistently degraded relative to their preposition-matched counterparts. Second, this mismatch penalty arose for elliptical and non-elliptical variants alike with only minor differences between the two. Finally, a significant portion of the mismatch penalties was explained away by the degree of semantic similarity between the thematic relations established by the mismatching prepositions with respect to the antecedent verb which was measured in a separate norming experiment. We examine the consequences of these new empirical results for current theories of pseudogapping, namely (i) the remnant-raising analysis, according to which the remnant XP is raised leftward out of the VP prior to VP ellipsis, licensed under identity with its antecedent; and (ii) the direct generation analysis, under which auxiliaries are verbal proforms that recover their referent anaphorically without the need for remnant movement or syntactic identity between the verb and its antecedent. We conclude that the data are more naturally accounted for under the direct generation approach.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remnant connectivity in pseudogapping: Experimental evidence for a direct generation approach

Poppels¹,

Miller²

2022

J. Ling.

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Constraining Head-Stranding Ellipsis

Landau

2020

Linguistic Inquiry

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Ellipsis of a constituent whose head has moved out of it (“headless ellipsis”) is possible in some cases but not in others. Headless ellipsis is licensed only if the stranded head has not crossed a Spell-Out domain. The reason is that the silencing instruction responsible for ellipsis must be PF-visible on the head of the elided constituent, and PF-visibility is cut off at Spell-Out domain boundaries. A parallel effect is observed with remnants of head movement that are frozen for movement (“headless movement”). The two effects can possibly be united if ellipsis and copy deletion recruit the same silencing instruction at PF, hosted on the head of the deleted constituent. A third, mirror-image effect is observed with reprise fragments, which must be visibly headed. This time head movement removes the PF instruction that spares these fragments from ellipsis. Overall, these phenomena establish the significance of headedness for the syntax-PF interface.

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Pseudogapping in English: a direct interpretation approach

Kim

Runner

2022

The Linguistic Review

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Gapping elides a finite verb in the non-initial conjunct of a coordinate structure while VP ellipsis deletes a whole VP after an auxiliary. Unlike these two, pseudogapping elides most of the VP except one remnant. Pseudogapping additionally differs from gapping and VP ellipsis, in that it involves ellipsis of part of a non-finite VP. In this paper we provide a Construction Grammar account of pseudogapping that captures its similarities with as well as differences from other related elliptical constructions like VP ellipsis. Our construction-based analysis, which capitalizes on the inheritance network of constructions to capture broad similarities and unique differences among these constructions, allows us to account for the full range of extant data.

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Pseudogapping, Parallelism, and the Scope of Focus

Cited by 7 publications

References 51 publications

Remnant connectivity in pseudogapping: Experimental evidence for a direct generation approach

Remnant connectivity in pseudogapping: Experimental evidence for a direct generation approach

Constraining Head-Stranding Ellipsis

Pseudogapping in English: a direct interpretation approach

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