ON THE ROLE OF UNPRONOUNCED SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

Jason Merchant
University of Chicago

Friday, March 4, 2:00PM MJH Rm 126

Sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center/Mellon Foundation
Graduate Research Program


In this talk, I review our understanding of a variety of ellipsis phenomena, and weigh the pros and cons of a range of approaches that have been taken in generative analyses in the last four decades. I present data from comparatives, VP-ellipsis, sluicing, and fragment answers in a variety of languages, and concentrate mostly on novel data from fragment answers that provide new arguments that support a variation on the traditional view that at least some ellipsis is the result of 'deletion' (non-pronunication) of otherwise normal syntactic structure. I then develop structural analyses consistent with this position that account for some well-known problems for the structural view (certain lack of island effects).











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