The Syntax of Silence Sluicing, Islands, and the Theory of Ellipsis

by Merchant, Jason

• ISBN13: 9780199243723
• ISBN10: 0199243727
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Two of the best studied and most intriguing areas in syntax and semantics are ellipsis and wh-movement, and although these areas have generated immense interest individually, their intersection - in elliptical wh-questions known as sluicing - has remained largely neglected. This book fills that gap. It does so on the basis of the most sustained empirical investigation of sluicing ever conducted, drawing on novel data from thirty languages that give rise to a number of surprising and theoretically-challenging generalizations. The author shows that sluicing structures are crucial to answering the fundamental questions about the nature of ellipsis: how ellipsis is resolved, whether there is syntactic structure internal to the ellipsis site, and whether the identity requirement on ellipsis is syntactic or semantic. The author proposes a new and elegant theory of ellipsis based on semantic identity, and shows how this theory overcomes problems encountered by common alternatives based on syntactic isomorphism. He posits that ellipsis sites are syntactically complete, though unpronounced, and provides a novel account of how a semantic theory of ellipsis is compatible with syntactic deletion. The facts of sluicing argue also that our conception of islandhood must be refined in fundamental ways, leading to a pluralistic view of islands, with wh-movement extraction deviancies distributed over different components of the grammar. This work sheds new light on some of the most central and long-standing questions in the study of ellipsis and wh-movement, and has important implications for understanding the relations between syntax and semantics. Jason Merchant writes accessibly for linguists of all schools and persuasions. The issues he addresses will interest theoreticians and typologists, especially syntacticians, semanticists, and those interested in the syntax-semantics interface.

Author Biography

Jason Merchant is Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, and the author of many articles on ellipsis and sluicing in particular. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has been a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University and an NWO post-doctoral fellow at the University of Groningen.

Table of Contents

General Preface	ix
Preface	xi
Abbreviations	xiv
Introduction	1	(6)
Overview of the Book	7	(1)
Note to the Reader	8	(2)
Identity in Ellipsis: Focus and Isomorphism	10	(29)
Semantic Background	11	(2)
The Focus and Isomorphism Conditions	13	(6)
Problems for Isomorphism	19	(6)
The Revised Focus Condition and e-GIVENness	25	(12)
e-GIVENness in VP-Ellipsis	26	(3)
e-GIVENness in Sluicing	29	(8)
Summary	37	(2)
The Syntax of Sluicing	39	(47)
External Syntax: The Sluice as an Interrogative CP	40	(14)
Selection	41	(1)
Number Agreement	42	(1)
Case	42	(3)
Positional Distribution	45	(6)
German Wh-Stress Shift	51	(3)
Summary	54	(1)
Internal Syntax: The Hidden Structure of the Sluice	54	(28)
Licensing Conditions on IP-Ellipsis	55	(6)
The COMP Domain in Sluicing	61	(21)
Summary	82	(4)
Appendix: Wh-in-situ Languages	84	(2)
Islands and Form-Identity	86	(22)
Syntactic (`Strong') Islands in Sluicing	86	(3)
The Form-Identity Generalizations	89	(19)
Case-Matching	89	(2)
Preposition-Stranding	91	(17)
Deletio nata atque mortua	108	(51)
Ross (1969): Deletion and the Problem of Islands	108	(7)
Pseudosluicing	115	(13)
Initial Considerations	117	(3)
Contra the Equation `Sluicing = Pseudosluicing'	120	(7)
Summary	127	(1)
Sluicing ≠ WH-Op + Resumptive	128	(18)
Initial Considerations	129	(3)
Resumptivity and Case	132	(13)
Conclusions	145	(1)
Chung et al. (1995): IP Copy, Merger, and Sprouting	146	(6)
IP-Copy and A'-Chain Uniformity	152	(6)
Summary	158	(1)
Deletio redux	159	(71)
PF-Islands	163	(37)
Left-Branch Extractions	163	(20)
COMP-Trace Effects	183	(2)
Derived-Position Islands: Topicalizations and Subjects	185	(8)
Coordinate Structure Constraint I: The Conjunct Condition	193	(7)
Summary	200	(1)
E-Type Anaphora Under Sluicing	200	(8)
The Problem: A'-Traces under Sluicing	201	(3)
The Solution: `Vehicle Change' and E-Type Pronouns	204	(4)
Summary	208	(1)
Propositional Islands	208	(18)
Relative Clauses	208	(13)
Adjuncts and Sentential Subjects	221	(2)
Coordinate Structure Constraint II: Extraction out of a Conjunct	223	(3)
Selective (`Weak') Islands	226	(3)
Summary	229	(1)
Conclusion	230	(2)
References	232	(19)
Language Index	251	(2)
Name Index	253	(5)
Subject Index	258