Lecture | Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
Left node not raising: Word part ellipsis revisited
- Date
- Thursday 22 June 2023
- Time
- Series
- Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.01
Abstract
In this talk, we describe a novel ellipsis phenomenon that deletes the second part of compounds, stranding the left side of the compound in sentence-final position:
|
(1) |
Deze |
lift |
is |
zevenpersoons, |
en |
die |
acht____. |
|
(Dutch) |
|
|
this |
lift |
is |
seven.person.adj |
and |
that |
eight |
|
|
|
|
‘This lift can carry seven people, and that one can carry eight people.’ |
||||||||
We refer to this phenomenon as “left part stranding” (LPS for short) and show that it occurs both in Dutch and Hungarian in very similar ways and can affect the second part of an N-N or A-A compound, or adjectival compounds of the type shown in (1). In addition to the fact that LPS curiously violates Lexical Integrity and cannot be classified as any known exception to this condition (such as coordination reduction of the first part of a compound in a second coordinand, cf. onderzoek doelstelling of __ belangstelling, or the second part of a compound in a first coordinand, cf. ijs __ en bruine beren, see Booij 1985), LPS is also curious in that it has many unexpected properties, which are atypical of any process of coordination reduction or right node raising.
- It is only possible under clausal but not phrasal coordination;
- it preferably occurs in compounds that are the adjectival or nominal predicate of a clause;
- it preferably (in some cases obligatorily) co-occurs with gapping or TP-ellipsis (such as fragments);
- the stranded left part is necessarily contrastive.
After inventorising its morphosyntactic and semantic properties, we explain this set of constraints on LPS with reference to semantic conditions on ellipsis identity.