The crosslinguistic syntax of sluicing: evidence from hungarian relatives

Abstract

Abstract. This paper deals with an elliptical construction in Hungarian that to our knowledge has not received any attention in the theoretical literature so far. It involves the deletion of a relative clause with the exclusion of the relative pronoun and one more remaining constituent. We show that this construction should be analyzed as an instance of sluicing. The theoretical approach we provide for these sentences is an adapted version of Merchant's (2001) implementation of sluicing in terms of an [e]‐feature that is responsible for the deletion process. Our extension of this proposal involves the modification of the syntactic subcontent of this [e]‐feature. We show that languages where question words are found in the operator domain of the left periphery use a version of the [e]‐feature that attaches to heads whose specifier is occupied by an operator. This predicts that sluicing not only occurs with wh‐remnants but more widely with operator remnants as well. With this proposal we lay the foundation for a crosslinguistic taxonomy of sluicing constructions, and open new avenues towards explaining root/embedded asymmetries in some as yet ill‐understood elliptical phenomena in English.

Relative pronouns as sluicing remnants

“…In Gungbe, wh-and focus elements move to the same 6 In more exact detail the authors suggest that sluicing tracks wh-syntax in languages: the feature content of whelements in non-elliptical questions determines what kind of remnants can escape TP-ellipsis in sluicing. In an E-feature approach like Merchant's (2001), this boils down to the licensing requirement making reference to features on the remnant relativized to the type of features found on interrogatives, as stated in (i) (i) THE WH/SLUICING-CORRELATION (van Craenenbroeck and Lipták 2006) The syntactic features that the E-feature checks in a certain language are identical to the strong features a whphrase checks in a non-elliptical constituent question in that language. …”

“…For Hungarian specifically, van Craenenbroeck and Lipták (2006) have shown that sluicing can leave any operator phrase in the left periphery, not only wh-or focus-constituents but also (universal) quantifiers.…”

“…The crucial observation relevant here is that in languages in which wh-movement in constituent questions is indistinguishable from movement of other constituents allow sluicing after such constituents as well  cf. van Craenenbroeck & Lipták (2006, 2013 for Hungarian, as well as Grebenyova (2006) for Russian, Hoyt & Theodorescu (2012) for Romanian, Lipták & Aboh (2013) for Gungbe.…”

“…Next to examples in which relatives contain VP ellipsis or ellipsis of a postfocal constituent (see van Craenenbroeck and Lipták 2006 for examples of this sort), the corpus contains many examples in which the sole overt item in a relative clause is the relative pronoun itself, and the missing predicate in the relative clause is identical to the embedding predicate in the matrix clause. This is a pattern of relative clause formation that is perfectly productive and can be found both in literary style and in oral language use.…”

The syntax of emphatic positive polarity in Hungarian: Evidence from ellipsis

“…I submit that the reason why nem is different from igen in this respect has to do with the fact that negation, unlike affirmative polarity, is a logical operator. As van Craenenbroeck and Lipták (2006) Leaving igen's intimate relationship with contrast for future investigation, its dependency on elliptical contexts can be given the following account. Since igen cannot be the spell-out of the elliptical site as a whole according to the extraction test applied above (cf.…”