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This paper focuses on clausal ellipsis, in particular sluicing and stripping, in Japanese. In the literature, two derivational options have been proposed for Japanese sluicing: (I) the movement of the remnant, followed by TP-deletion (Takahashi in J East Asian Linguist 3: 265–300, 1994), and (II) the deletion of the presuppositional clause of the cleft construction (Saito in Nanzan Linguist 1: 21–50, 2004). The mixed properties of sluicing suggest that Japanese sluicing has multiple derivational sources. This paper argues for this hybrid approach to sluicing, by examining another and yet-unnoticed type of clausal ellipsis: the stripping construction that includes a wh-remnant with focus interpretation. We argue that wh-stripping also has multiple derivational sources, namely, focus movement of the remnant wh-phrase followed by TP-deletion and the cleft construction, as in the case of sluicing. By examining negative polarity items, islands, and quantifier scope interactions, we show that wh-stripping in Japanese exhibits mixed syntactic properties, and we put forth our proposal that this makes it hard to narrow down its derivational path to a single construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores the morphosyntactic properties of the elliptical structure of sluicing in Ta'izzi Arabic, a dialect spoken in the southwestern part of Yemen, with a particular focus on sluicing in preposition-stranding contexts within the generative grammar paradigm. The Arabic dialect under study seems to allow sluicing with preposition stranding, thus constituting, in principle, counterevidence to Preposition Stranding Generalization (PSG) proposed by Merchant (2001). That is, Arabic permits a preposition to be stranded under sluicing, though this is not allowed in regular wh-movements. The paper demonstrates that what gives the impression of sluicing in P-stranding contexts is actually pseudosluicing. Such a structure is not generated from a typical wh-question. Instead, it is originally derived from a wh-cleft source in which the relative clause containing the preposition and the copular pronoun are elided. This suggests that the language has two potential elliptical structures: true sluicing, which originates from regular wh-questions and TP ellipsis at PF, and pseudosluicing, which stems from a wh-cleft source where the ellipsis of the relative clause containing the preposition and the copular pronoun occurred at PF. It also suggests that, despite their distinct origins, the two elliptical derivations can be straightforwardly derived through the movement of the remnant wh-phrase from the specifier position of TP (Spec; TP) to the specifier position of CP (Spec; CP) in the sluiced clause.

Gravel replenishment is one existing solution for restoring riverbeds below dams. Prediction of erosion processes is crucial for river management planning of efficient replenishment. This study investigates the capacity of a large-scale, two-dimensional morphodynamic model to reproduce berm erosion and sediment wave propagation. The model enables quantification of the efficiency of several management scenarios according to berm geometry, location and sediment supply condition (dam closed or not during floods). Results show that replenishment efficiency is strongly dependent on the berm geometry and sediment supply. Berms should be located as close as possible to the low-flow channel and be as long as possible. Desynchronization between hydrographs and sedigraphs could be responsible for propagating sediment deficit which reduces the efficiency of replenishment. This model is a powerful management tool for the design of replenishment operations and the main conclusions of this work could be extended to other sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore sluicing in Basque, the elliptical phenomenon whereby the interrogative clause is elided, but the wh-remnant is pronounced. Specifically, I address the long-debated question of whether sluicing involves a full-fledged syntactic structure or not. By employing diverse cross-linguistic tests (case matching, binding, and adposition (non-)stranding), I show that there is structure therein. In short, I entertain the hypothesis that this phenomenon involves independently available wh-movement and subsequent deletion of the ellipsis site, which consists of silent structure; namely, I propose a move-and-delete account for sluicing in Basque.

We present evidence for an overlap in the discourse functions of Spanish cómo que XP ‘how thatcomplementizer’ and French comment ça ∅/XP ‘how thatdemonstrative’ interrogatives. We argue for three shared discourse functions: clarification requests, mirative questions, and expressions of disagreement. We show that these functions are cued by an interplay of morpho-syntactic and contextual factors. At the morpho-syntactic level, whether grammatical person shifts (is indirectly cited) compared to the previous turn and whether additional linguistic material (the ‘remnant’) is present after ‘how that’ were found to be important predictors of discourse function. At the contextual level, whether and how the speaker continues her turn after the interrogative is our most significant predictor. We quantify the degree to which these and other cues allow for a prediction of the discourse functions and find that the resulting model predicts more clarification request uses and fewer mirative and disagreement uses than empirically attested. This indicates that some cues for these two readings are missing from our model. We propose that prosody might be one of them.

Recent research suggests that verb echo answers (VEAs) to a polar question in Japanese are derived by sluicing: the V head moves to C, and the complement of C, TP, undergoes deletion, stranding the verbal complex in C. Two pieces of evidence are provided for the view: adjunct inclusive interpretation and voice mismatch, neither of which is conclusive, as shown here. One consequence of the sluicing analysis is that VEAs reverse scope. We show that the semantic shift has nothing to do with the scope reversal. Our conclusion is that VEAs are unambiguously derived by multiple applications of argument ellipsis. We also advance an alternative explanation of the obligatory wide scope for focus phrases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pseudosluicing diagnostics have played an important role in wider debates about sluicing. Sluicing is the term used to describe the deletion of an embedded clausal constituent, which leaves only a wh‐phrase overt. Genuine sluicing requires syntactic or semantic identity between the sluiced clause and its antecedent, contrasting with pseudosluicing, in which pro‐drop creates the appearance of a sluice but no identity is required. The underlying structure of sluicing in several Austronesian languages has been argued to be pseudoclefts, which involve a nominal wh‐predicate and a headless relative clause argument. Both Malagasy and Nukuoro have been analysed as having pseudocleft sluicing, and on the basis of this, claims about the type of identity required in sluicing have been made. Both analyses rely on diagnostics that rule out the possibility of pseudosluicing. This paper reexamines the pseudosluicing diagnostics used for Malagasy and Nukuoro and concludes that they have been insufficiently controlled for. This is supported by data from Madurese showing that pseudosluicing diagnostics are inconclusive in these Austronesian languages. Language‐internal support is needed for such diagnostics, especially as they play an important role in the conclusions drawn from Austronesian languages on the wider identity requirement for sluicing. Three language‐specific diagnostics are given which are successfully able to identify pseudosluicing in Madurese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to explain a systematic phenomenon that has been described in interlanguage grammars crosslinguistically: Null-Prep, which consists of omitting the obligatory preposition in certain movement constructions. We propose that Null-Prep is not related to lack of knowledge of wh -movement, as previously assumed, but to structural complexity; indeed, we consider Null-Prep a movement-derived structure. With evidence from prepositional relative clauses, wh -interrogatives, and sluicing constructions in first language (L1) and second language (L2) Spanish (English and Arabic L1s), we predict the potential appearance of the Null-Prep with a two-way complexity hierarchy that takes into account the syntactic position displaced, as well as its derivational complexity, in such a way that we calculate Null-Prep to occur more often in Relative Clauses, followed by Sluicing, and finally by Questions. This scalar phenomenon uniformly applies to all participants, native and L2 learners, emphasizing its universal nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a detailed description of reduced embedded questions in Chakhar Mongolian and proposes to analyze them in terms of so-called pseudo-sluicing. It has been noted in the literature that the comparable construction in Khalkha Mongolian does not exhibit the so-called case-matching effect, a phenomenon in which the case of a remnant interrogative phrase matches that of its correlate in the preceding context. We show that it also holds in Chakhar Mongolian. We argue that reduced embedded questions in the language have a pseudo-sluicing structure, which straightforwardly accounts for the absence of the relevant effect. Our proposal is supported by the appearance of a copula and pronominal subjects in those reduced questions and by the fact that reduced questions can be pragmatically controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a descriptive and analytical overview of potential ellipsis cases in Spanish. After highlighting the main complications that the notion of ellipsis brings up, this work presents a detailed summary of the main empirical properties of ellipsis in nominal, verbal and clausal contexts. Then, the main theories about ellipsis and the analytical alternatives to standard deletion at PF are presented. The article concludes with a discussion of what type of properties ellipsis may have in Spanish.

Exclamative sluices (What a goal!, How odd!) have not been part of the debate on the nature of ellipsis constructions. As we show here their profile is quite different from the usual suspects, VP ellipsis and interrogative sluicing – they occur much more frequently than their clausal counterparts and their resolution is more often than not exophoric (i.e., not based on a linguistic antecedent.). On our analysis exclamative sluices are simply scaled up predications of a contextually given entity. We show how this, taken together with an existing semantically-based account of interrogative sluicing, offers an account of the disparity in exophoric potential between the two types of sluicing, an account which is not available to standard, deletion-based accounts. We argue – against most existing views (though with important exceptions which we note and on whose insights we build) – that exclamatives are propositional in nature and develop an account of exclaiming already applicable to laughter, smiling, and head shakes. This account provides a direct link between scaled up predication and increased arousal, itself taken to involve scalar incrementation.

Wh-doubling is a widely attested phenomenon in sign languages. Several analyses are found in the literature assuming, for example, base-generation of one of the doubles or making (heavy) use of remnant movement. Using data from German Sign Language, this article discusses the possibility that the structure might be derived from a relative clause embedded under a wh-question which finally undergoes sluicing. It will be argued that such an account correctly predicts the distribution of the wh-phrases found in German Sign Language doubling constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sluicing—a clausal ellipsis in which the only pronounced part of a question is the wh-phrase—has been controversial since its emergence (Ross, 1969). I address herein the existence and nature of the ellipsis site's content with an experimental argument from the field of first language acquisition. Using intervention effects as a diagnostic of movement, this study examines whether Najdi Arabic (NA)-speaking children show a subject advantage in sluicing and whether a mismatch in animacy features aids their interpretation of object sluices. A yes/no question task was conducted with 48 NA-speaking children. The results revealed that NA-speaking children exhibit a statistically significant subject advantage, although economy considerations constrain when this subject advantage emerges. Yet, no effect of mismatching animacy was found. Regardless, the results argue in favour of the structural-movement analysis of sluicing. This study contributes to the persistent debate on ellipsis site content by providing an experimental argument that relies on data from the acquisition of sluicing in NA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Across many languages, multiple sluicing obeys a clausemate constraint. This can be understood on the empirically well-supported assumption that covert phrasal wh-movement is clause-bounded and subject to Superiority. We provide independent evidence for syntactic structure at the ellipsis site and for locality constraints on movement operations within the ellipsis site. The fact that the distribution of multiple sluicing is substantially narrower than that of multiple wh-questions, on their single-pair as well as their pair-list reading, entails that there must be mechanisms for scoping in-situ wh-phrases that do not rely on covert phrasal wh-movement. We adopt the choice-functional account for single-pair readings. For pair-list readings, we develop a novel functional analysis, argue for the functional basis of pair-list readings, and present a new perspective on pair-list readings of questions with quantifiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so-called aggressively non-D-linked construction (ANDC) involving wh-the-hell phrases like what the hell is of empirical and theoretical interest due to its complex morphosyntactic and semantic/pragmatic properties. This paper focuses on the construction in general as well as in ellipsis phenomena. We first explore its grammatical properties on the basis of attested corpus data and show that the construction can occur more widely in elliptical constructions than suggested by previous literature. We then suggest that the licensing conditions of the ANDC in ellipsis are not solely syntax-based but due to tight interactions among a variety of grammatical components such as morphosyntax, semantics, and discourse/pragmatics. We also argue that the authentic uses of the construction favor a Direct Interpretation (DI) approach that can account for its uses in a variety of environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relatively impermeable soil-free substrates (clay-rich outcrops and sediments) exposed at eight abandoned placer gold mines generate alkaline mine drainage through evaporation and minor interaction between water and rock in a semi-arid rain shadow climate. Original mine sluicing a century ago created drainage channels over the land surface that still control the flow of ephemeral surface waters, with localised construction of erosional outwash pans. Ephemeral surface waters and associated evaporitic salts are dominated by halite derived from marine aerosols in rain, yielding circumneutral pH and electrical conductivity (EC) values locally exceeding 50 mS/cm. Weakly altered schist basement rocks and Miocene mudstone exposed at the surface contain abundant calcite, and surface waters are supersaturated with respect to Ca-carbonate minerals with a pH of ≈ 8 and an EC of ≈ 1 mS/cm. Water interaction with albite increases the dissolved Na/Cl molar ratio to > 1, and evaporative formation of Na-carbonate precipitates can raise the pH to > 10. Pyrite oxidation does not offset the alkaline pH in any of these processes, although dissolved sulfate can rise to high levels (> 2000 mg/L; EC ≈ 5 mS/cm), forming evaporative sulfate minerals. Ephemeral waters drain down outcrops and the relatively impermeable erosional pans, leaving salt encrustations with variable mineralogy and associated waters with pH and EC values that are partially controlled by rates of dissolution and reprecipitation of the minerals in the salts. The saline alkaline chemistry of the pans excludes most vegetation and has allowed development of salt-tolerant ecosystems with rare endemic halophytic plants. Maintenance of soil-free halophytic surfaces has potential applications in dryland mine sites around the world, especially as climate change enhances and extends aridity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a comparative analysis of English and Hungarian reprise fragments. We argue that reprise fragments should be afforded the same theoretical treatment as standard (i.e. non-reprise) fragments. Assuming that standard fragmentary answers and questions are remnants of an ellipsis operation that applies to a clause, this entails that reprise fragments are also remnants of clausal ellipsis. We show that the prevailing approach to standard fragments, which assumes that the remnant of ellipsis always undergoes movement (Merchant 2001, 2004), cannot be plausibly extended to explain the crosslinguistic reprise-fragment data. We argue that a theory is required that restricts antecedents to interrogatives and that allows--but crucially does not require--movement of the remnant. Under this account, the differences observed between English and Hungarian reprise and standard fragments follow from independent syntactic differences in how standard and reprise questions are formed in these languages. We therefore provide new evidence to support theories of ellipsis identity that state that only questions make for suitable antecedents for clausal ellipsis (so-called Q-equivalence approaches) and to support sententialist analyses of clausal ellipsis that permit ellipsis to occur around designated constituents (so-called in-situ approaches).* [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the grammaticality status of reduced sluicing remnants (i.e., remnants realized as NPs due to preposition drop) in Polish. We provide experimental evidence that reduced remnants are variously acceptable in a specific environment (where there is a prior explicit correspondent in the antecedent clause) and are as unacceptable as ungrammatical structures elsewhere. We interpret this pattern as reflecting elaboration effects (i.e., effects that the degree of elaboration of explicit correspondents has on the acceptability of reduced remnants) that follow from the cue-based retrieval theory of sentence processing. Our data support the option of treating reduced remnants as ungrammatical but sometimes acceptable and the option of treating them as grammatical but sometimes degraded, and we discuss how they fit into the current theories of clausal ellipsis.

Ellipsis is restricted by an identity condition such that elided material must be identical in some fashion to a linguistic antecedent. The traditional view is that this requirement is syntactic in nature. Merchant, in 2001, however, proposed that the identity condition is fundamentally semantic, leading to a substantive debate in the ellipsis literature. Potsdam, in 2007, used the sluicing construction in Malagasy to argue for Merchant's semantic licensing condition; however, since that work, at least two alternative analyses of sluicing constructions in other Austronesian languages, Nukuoro and Malay/Indonesian, have been proposed that are potentially compatible with a syntactic identity condition. This paper considers those analyses for Malagasy and shows that they are untenable. Malagasy sluicing requires that the antecedent and the elided clause need not be syntactically identical. It thus continues to support a non-syntactic identity condition on ellipsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss apparent violations to the P(reposition)-Stranding Generalization (Merchant 2001) in Spanish, a language that does not allow P-stranding in regular wh-questions. I will refer to these apparent violations to the P-stranding Generalization as cases of P(reposition)-omission, which I define as the omission of a preposition in an ellipsis fragment. In order to provide a unified analysis for all types of clausal ellipsis, I examine different constructions such as sluicing, fragment answers, contrast sluicing, stripping and pseudostripping, split questions, and sprouting. I claim that P-omission in clausal ellipsis in Spanish is only allowed when the following two conditions are met: (a) the remnant's correlate in the antecedent does not move, and (b) the remnant does not move. I account for the distribution of this phenomenon by arguing that ellipsis is licensed under strict syntactic identity, and that the remnant doesn't need to move to escape deletion. Additionally, I show that previous approaches that derive P-omission in Spanish from non-isomorphic, copular sources make incorrect predictions with regard to the patterns found in different types of clausal ellipsis in this language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors suggest that pseudogapping and VPE both belong to the same meso-construction of auxiliary-sensitive ellipsis, but each has its own constructional constraints. This form/meaning mismatch usually implies, on the one hand, an "incomplete" syntax (i.e. the material which is necessary for the interpretation is missing in the syntactic structure), and, on the other hand, a context dependency (i.e. the missing material is generally recovered from an antecedent in the context). Keywords: corpus studies; ellipsis; experimental studies; fragments; gapping; pseudogapping; sluicing; VPE EN corpus studies ellipsis experimental studies fragments gapping pseudogapping sluicing VPE 335 340 6 09/06/22 20220901 NES 220901 1 Ellipsis issues Ellipsis constitutes a challenge to the Saussurean definition of the I linguistic sign i (which associates a form - I signifiant i - with a content - I signifié i ), since in elliptical constructions we get an interpretation in the absence of form ( I significatio ex nihilo i ). Ellipsis, experimental studies, corpus studies, fragments, gapping, pseudogapping, sluicing, VPE. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, I describe the internal structure, surface distribution, and scope possibilities for comparative phrases in Syrian Arabic. Comparative phrases may show surface displacement from their scalar associate in this language, subject to certain restrictions. The restrictions on surface displacement match those on scope construal, suggesting that scope construal involves covert displacement. Further, the restrictions on displacement are shown to be at work in 'Comparative Deletion', an ellipsis process operative in clausal comparatives. Comparative Deletion is shown to suspend barriers to movement involved in the semantic derivation of clausal comparative constructions, as reported previously for English. However, I show that attempts in the literature to reduce the barrier-suspending effect of Comparative Deletion to ellipsis in general do not extend to Syrian Arabic. Rather, the Arabic facts suggest that the suspension of constraints on movement under Comparative Deletion is unique to comparative constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sluicing has traditionally been analyzed as an operation involving wh-movement and deletion (Merchant 2001). French is a language that has both fronted and wh-in situ strategies; on the surface, however, it seems that French sluices do not involve (overt) movement, in spite of this being an available option. For nearly all wh-words, the in situ and moved forms are the same; the notable exception is que/quoi ‘what’— que is found in fronted wh-questions alone, while quoi is found in situ. In sluicing, only quoi surfaces, suggesting that French may be a challenge for the movement-and-deletion approach (Dagnac 2019).By formalizing an analysis within a late insertion approach to the syntax-morphology interface, I argue that not only do sluices in French involve full structure, but that these involve movement as well. I assume that the wh-word is initially represented in the syntactic derivation as an abstract feature bundle. The morphological form is determined in the mapping of syntax to morphology by locality-dependent Vocabulary Insertion (VI) rules that are sensitive to C. These rules apply only after ellipsis occurs. Additionally, following Thoms (2010), I argue that C is targeted in sluicing, and as a result sluicing destroys the context that would trigger que. In this way, French sluicing provides support for the idea that ellipsis is able to bleed morphological operations (Saab & Lipták 2016; among others). The benefit of this analysis is that it is able to capture sluicing in French, while simultaneously explaining the behavior of quoi more generally.

The sedimentary sequences found within estuaries in the north west Nelson region of central New Zealand are investigated in order to quantify the timing of the end of the Post Glacial Marine Transgression. This region has been identified as being relatively stable in terms of vertical tectonic movement during the Holocene, but is yet to yield any reconstructions of eustatic sea level. In this study, we investigate the Holocene infill of a barrier estuary (Parapara Inlet) through sedimentological analysis and radiocarbon dating of 18 vibracores up to 4.2 m in length. It is found that the estuary infilled through a combination of lateral flood tide and fluvial delta progradation as well as vertical central basin infill. The central basin infilled at a consistent rate of 0.4 mm/year in both the mid (7.0–6.0 ka) and late-Holocene (2.5–1.5 ka). By the time of early human (Maori) settlement (c. 1 ka), the estuary surface was at low intertidal elevations with sediment being transported from the fluvial to tidal delta. A discernible change in sedimentation rates could not be associated with Maori settlement; however, infill rates increased to at least 12.5 mm/year in the past 150 years due hydraulic sluicing associated with mining. The sedimentary history of Parapara Inlet is compared to nearby Whanganui Inlet, d'Urville Island and Nelson to establish the character of regional Holocene sea level movement. It is found that relative sea level reached modern elevations between 8 and 7 ka in the region. The similarity between sea level curves for the end of the post glacial marine transgression (PMT) to other tectonically stable sites in northern New Zealand suggests that this curve can now be considered a true eustatic signal for the New Zealand archipelago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pesetsky (1995) argued that both objects in the double object construction must be selected arguments of the lexical verb, based on patterns of optionality. A closer examination shows that this is not correct. The second object of the double object construction and both the NP and PP of the PP frame behave like selected arguments of the lexical verb: the lexical verb determines both whether they can be implicit or not, and how they are interpreted when they are (indefinite versus definite). In contrast, particular lexical verbs determine whether the first object of the double object construction can be dropped, but not how it is interpreted. All implicit first objects are interpreted as pragmatically recoverable definites. Implicit first objects also do not license sluicing, unlike all other implicit objects. I propose a purely syntactic account of these patterns, using the ApplP analysis of double object constructions (Marantz 1993; Bruening 2001). In the analysis, arguments of functional heads like Voice and Appl can only be implicit in the presence of a Pass(ive) head, but arguments of lexical verbs are left implicit through adjunction of an operator to the lexical V. I show that implicit arguments are not projected as NPs in the syntax, contra works like Landau (2010). The failure of sluicing with implicit first objects is then analogous to the failure of sluicing with active-passive pairs. I also suggest that the identity condition on ellipsis makes reference to maximal projections, not to heads as in Rudin (2019). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of certain semantic intuitions, Barros (2012) argues that ellipsis does not require structural isomorphism between elided structure and its antecedent. We tackle this claim. Semantic intuitions cannot be a pointer to the analysis of silent structure. We provide empirical evidence that raises the question of to what extent semantic intuitions about plausible articulable syntax must inform one's analysis of silent structure. We conclude that the answer to this question must be crosslinguistically informed. We conjecture that ellipsis introduces ellipsis-specific interpretive mechanisms, so that intuitions about "how the unelided structure would be interpreted" are not empirically relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Georgian and Svan exhibit a construction similar to classical sluicing: that is, translational analogs are grammatical of sentences like ‘Mary cooked something, but I don’t know what’. I provide a description of these phenomena and show that this construction in both languages satisfies standard tests for sluicing. I show that wh-movement in Georgian targets a lower position than in, say, English, namely, Spec FocP. Accordingly, I argue that the account developed in Toosarvandani (2008) for Persian and Van Craenenbroeck & Lipták (2006, 2013) for Hungarian is applicable in this case as well. Specifically, sluicing-like constructions in Georgian are derived by movement of wh-phrases into this position and subsequent deletion of the complement of the FocP. The syntax of the Svan counterpart of this construction differs in some crucial aspects and its analysis is yet to be obtained.

This paper examines the typological aspects of coordinated WH-Questions in Persian language. Coordination is one of the syntactic operations that makes a compound or complex phrase or sentence. It is widely assumed that two conjuncts have to be alike in their grammatical and semantic functions. Williams (1981) proposed the Law of Coordination of Likes; that is, the coordinated constituents must be the same in terms of their syntactic category; 1) a. John ate the apple and the orange. b.* John ate the apple and yesterday. In example (1b) the constituents the apple (NP) and yesterday (ADVP) differ in their syntactic categories. So, this violates the Law of Coordination of Likes. Despite the above description, the coordination of WH-words with different functions is possible in languages such as Hungarian: 2) a.Ki es mikor latta Marit? (pre verbal coordination in Hungarian) who-nom and when saw-3Sg Mary-acc “Who saw Mary and when?” b. Mikor es hol lattad Marit? when and where saw-2Sg Mary-Acc “When and where did you see Mary?” 3) a. Ki latta Marit es mikor? (post verbal coordination) who-Nom saw-3Sg Mary-Acc and when “Who saw Mary and when?” b. Mikor lattad Marit es hol? when saw-2Sg Mary-Acc and where “When and where did you see Mary?” (Lipták, 2003, p. 143) In these coordinated WHs (e.g. 2a & 3a), an argument WH-word and an adjunct WH-word are coordinated; where the Law of Coordination of Likes does not seem to be held and the sentences are, yet grammatical. She classified the strategies of WH-coordination into four types. Adjunct CMWQ, only adjuncts can be coordinated like Dutch; Free CMWQ, any type of constituents can be coordinated, like Hungarian; Mixed CMWQ, only optional materials can be coordinated, like German and NO CMWQ, the coordination of WH-words is not permitted, like Chinese (Lipták, 2011). These cases have not been afforded due to consideration in the previous studies in Persian language. Thus, this paper attempts to find out what types of WH-words can be coordinated; whether Persian type is mixed, free or adjunct type and finally, which coordinated WH-words are permitted in sluicing. In Persian, two adjunct-WH-words; one argument WH-word (obligatory or optional) and one adjunct WH-word are coordinated. However, the coordination of two argument WH-words has not been observed in the data gathered for this research. So, this language has its own properties which are different from the types (adjunct, mixed and free) proposed by Lipták (2011). Its properties are given in Table (1). Furthermore, the Persian coordinated WH-words are used in two types: sequential and split. 4) a. key va kojâ be donyâ âmadi? (sequential) When & where were born. Sg.3. “When and where were you born?” b. Če kasâni va čerâ dar Tehrân be xiâbân âmadand? Who & why in Tehran to street came. Pl. “ ??Who and why did they come to the street? ” c. * Ki va či xarid? Who & what buy. Sg.Past. “Who and what did she buy?” 5) a. key be donyâ âmadi va kojâ? (split) When were born. Sg.3. & where “When and where were you born?” b. Če kasâni dar Tehrân be xiâbân âmadand va čerâ? Who in Tehran to street came. Pl. & why “ ??Who and why did they come to the street? ” c. * Ki xarid va či? Who buy.Sg.Past. & what In this language, one WH-fronting is permitted; that is Persian does not have multiple WH-fronting like Bolgarian language. It was supposed if a language does not have wh-fronting, it cannot have CMWQ either. The movement of one WH-word is permitted in Persian, so it has the coordination of WH-questions in Persian. Each clause only has one focus constituent (Rizzi, 2004). Eventually, it has been hypothesized that the coordinated constructions are probably bi-clausal, because it was supposed that if a language does not have multiple WH-fronting, it can have bi-clausal CMWQs only. As mentioned above, Persian has two types of sequential and Split types of WH-coordination. In sluicing constructions, the sequential type of coordinated WH-words has just been observed. All these sentences showed the sluicing without any antecedent for WH-words. 6) Šenidim tasâdof karde amâ nemidunim bâ ki va key. (without antecedent) Heard accident but not- know with who & when “I heard she had an accident but I don’t know with whom and when.”

We study two question particles (donc and ça) in a large French corpus. We show that they are specialized for direct questions, and that wh-ça is possible both in situ and in fronted position, contrary to previous literature (Cheng and Rooryck 2001). We also show that ellipsis is the most common use of wh-ça, with sluicing (Ross 1969) and a new construction that we call wh-stripping, while fronting is the most common use of wh-donc. In many examples, a non-elliptical question would be impossible or quite different, which seem to cast doubt on a deletion under identity approach of sluices (Ross 1969) and to favor a Direct Interpretation approach (Ginzburg and Sag 2000). Looking at the preceding context, in about half of wh-ça and wh-donc sluices, the wh-word has a correlate, and in the majority of cases, the correlate is definite. We suggest that the particle ça favors elliptical reprise questions, compared to bare wh-words, while the particle donc favors biased questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data from numerous languages, such as English, Frisian, and Danish, Merchant (2001) proposes the preposition stranding generalization (PSG), which states that only languages that allow preposition stranding under wh-movement also allow preposition stranding under sluicing. The availability of this generalization has been the subject of a number of studies. Two contrasting views have been identified in the literature. The first view confirms the availability of the PSG in a number of different languages. The other view claims that this generalization is untenable as there exist non-preposition stranding languages that allow preposition stranding under sluicing. Our aim in this paper is to examine the availability of the PSG in the dialect of Hijazi Arabic (HA). Based on empirical data from HA on the syntactic behavior of preposition stranding under wh-movement and under sluicing, we argue that this PSG does not hold in HA. It has been observed that HA is like Emirati Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, and Indonesian in that it disallows preposition stranding under wh-movement but allows it under sluicing. Therefore, the results of this research may contribute to the ongoing discussions on the phenomenon of sluicing in linguistic theory to help obtain a more universal analysis of this interesting ellipsis construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While ellipsis tolerates various kinds of mismatches, sluicing does not allow for a mismatch in active/passive voice between an ellipsis site and its antecedent. Merchant's (2013) analysis of the impossibility of voice mismatches under sluicing involves syntactic identity and different features of the Voice head. I will show that this analysis incorrectly predicts that voice mismatches should be possible in the passive-like active impersonal constructions in Polish, Irish, and Estonian. However, the syntactic identity approach can be rescued by appealing to a different source for the identity violation, analogous to argument structure mismatches.

This article addresses an as yet unnoticed Spanish superlative construction attested in the mid area of Northern Spain. This construction features two striking properties: (i) it contains a relative pronoun which, at first glance, does not seem to introduce a TP (there is no overt verb to its right), which raises the question how the relative pronoun can obtain its Case/theta role; (ii) even if it were true that the relative pronoun actually introduces a TP and heads a full subordinate clause (presumably a free relative), the latter would arise in an anomalous position which disrupts the natural word order of the main clause and where it seems to lack any obvious licensor (as an adjunct, argument or predicate). A simultaneous answer to both problems will be obtained from the proposal that the construction at issue is a “syntactic amalgam” (Lakoff 1974): (i) assuming Kluck’s (2011) approach to amalgams, the relative pronoun of the construction can unproblematically be considered to introduce a sluiced TP, so it heads a full relative clause and does have a (covert) Case/theta-role licensor; (ii) the disruptive position of the relative clause and the opacity for licensing from the main clause are now expected as they are the defining properties of the so-called “interrupting clauses” in Horn-/Andrews-amalgams. As in Kluck (2011), such properties will be assumed to result from the operation “par-merge” giving rise to paratactical configurations (de Vries 2007).

Ellipsis refers to an element that is absent from the input but whose meaning can nonetheless be recovered from context. In this cross-modal priming study, we examined the online processing of Sluicing, an ellipsis whose antecedent is an entire clause: The handyman threw a book to the programmer but I don’t know which book the handyman threw to the programmerellipsis. To understand such an elliptical construction, the listener arguably must ‘fill in’ the missing material (“the handyman threw___ to the programmer”) based on that which occurs in the antecedent clause. We aimed to determine the point in time in which reconstruction of the sluiced sentence is attempted and whether such a complex antecedent is re-accessed by the ellipsis. Out of the two antecedent constituents for which we probed, only the Object (programmer) was found active in the elliptical clause, confirming that an antecedent is attributed to the sluice in real time. Possible reasons for the non-observation of the Subject (handyman) are considered. We also suggest that ellipses are detected earlier in coordinated than subordinated sentences.

This report describes a new research resource: a searchable database of 4,700 naturally occurring instances of sluicing in English, annotated so as to shed light on the questions that have shaped research on ellipsis since the 1960s. The paper describes the data set and how it can be obtained, how it was constructed, how it is organized, and how it can be queried. It also highlights some initial empirical findings, first describing general characteristics of the data, then focusing more closely on issues concerning antecedents and possible mismatches between antecedents and ellipsis sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the reason why aggressively non-D-linked items such as wh-the-hell (WTH) are allowed in swiping, but not in sluicing. Investigating the potential syntactic, semantic and prosodic licensors of WTH in sluicing and swiping in the British English variety, we conclude that syntactic or semantic constraints cannot be the source of the difference. Instead, we propose a novel prosodic account in which the WTH must satisfy the prosodic licensing condition that it cannot bear nuclear accent. We show that this is satisfied in swiping, but not in sluicing contexts. On the basis of the novel findings of an acceptability rating study of swiping, which reveal that both 'given' and 'new' prepositions are equally acceptable for British English speakers, we argue that the preposition is accentuated in this elliptical construction because it is structurally the deepest element. The licensing condition on WTHs in sluicing and swiping is therefore not mediated directly by the conditions on ellipsis, but by the particular prosodic distribution that a WTH happens to have in sluicing and swiping. We extend the account to similar constructions in Dutch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hungarian adjectival sluices show agreement characteristics of predicative adjectives, even though the correlate of the adjective is in attributive position. This has been taken as evidence for the existence of non-isomorphic (i.e. copular/cleft) sources for the ellipsis site. However, such an analysis could only capture the distribution of apparent case-mismatches by positing copular sources for a subset of Hungarian sluices—a conceptually unappealing state of affairs. Instead we provide a more parsimonious analysis, which predicts the data without needing to posit exceptional sources. In particular, we argue for the existence of two different configurations: (1) one involving isomorphic wh-sources followed by ellipsis, and (2) one that does not involve ellipsis at all, but is rather a case of pseudosluicing. Pseudosluicing is the combination of a null subject and a null copula—elements that are independently available in the language, and whose restricted distribution explains constraints we observe on the distribution of pseudosluicing. Thus, on our analysis, only isomorphic wh-questions are possible sources for Hungarian sluicing structures, consistent with the most restrictive theories of elliptical identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Ellipsis refers to a phenomenon that involves the omission from a clause of one or more words that are nevertheless understood in the context of the remaining elements. The key question for its analysis is then how to license such correspondences between incomplete syntax and complete semantics. There have been two main strands: deletion-based and direct interpretation-based. The former derives elliptical structures from clausal sources such that there is no mismatch between the syntax and the semantics of ellipsis. Meanwhile, the latter countenances non-correspondences at syntax but derives sentential semantics from structured discourse information. This position paper discusses a direct interpretation perspective on ellipitcal constructions as represented by HPSG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we take a detailed look at clausal ellipsis in Icelandic, a hitherto understudied phenomenon. We focus on case-matching and case-mismatching facts in fragment responses. We argue that although case matching is the norm, constrained instances of case mismatching strongly suggest that there must be silent structure in the ellipsis site, and some syntactic identity condition. We outline these patterns in detail, and provide an analysis that assumes a post-syntactic approach to case marking, and a hybrid identity condition along the lines of Chung (2013). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An in-depth examination of sluiced prepositional phrases reveals sluices for which interpretation is unobtainable by parallelism with an antecedent. To accommodate these, I propose sluices are licensed by serving to question an inferred argument of a semantically compatible and salient antecedent. Both a corpus investigation and a grammaticality survey provide corroboration.

Taking “sluicing” to be derived by movement + deletion, as represented by Merchant (2001), and “pseudo-sluicing” to be a base-generated structure [pro (+be) + wh] (going by Wei 2004; Adams 2004), this paper reviews arguments for and against the presence of a sluicing construction in Mandarin Chinese. We show that all the tests available in the literature do not argue against the presence of such a sluicing construction, except the test building on the distribution of the copula shi. Unfortunately, the shi test is demonstrated to be uncertain and it cannot be used to argue conclusively that only a base-generation pseudo-sluicing analysis should be adopted. We show that a much clear evidence for an exclusive pseudo-sluicing analysis comes from the behavior of the sprouting construction. Investigation of sprouting also sheds light on the properties of null arguments, topic-variable relation, locality, and subcategorization of verbs in the language.