A Q-based approach to clausal ellipsis: Deriving the preposition stranding and island sensitivity generalisations without movement

Abstract

This paper argues that the meaning of a clausal ellipsis site can only be recovered from a 'syntactically derived question', regardless of whether this question is explicitly uttered or is merely pragmatically inferred. This entails that the meaning of a clausal ellipsis site cannot be recovered from an inferred question 'q' in a language L if 'q' is syntactically ill-formed in L. I demonstrate that this restriction on recoverability can account for Merchant’s (2001; 2004) 'Preposition-Stranding Generalisation' and for the observation that fragments appear to be sensitive to syntactic islands (Merchant 2004; Abels 2011; Barros et al. 2014; 2015) without any mention of whether remnants of clausal ellipsis themselves undergo movement. Because there is no need to stipulate that remnants themselves undergo (often exceptional) movement under this approach, a theory of clausal ellipsis modelled on Cable’s (2010) Q-based analysis of 'wh'-questions is developed that permits non-pronunciation “around” designated phrases. This approach is shown to be preferred on many occasions to the predominant movement-based analysis (Merchant 2004), which is too restrictive and must frequently resort to the notion of 'ellipsis' repair.

Keywords

• clausal ellipsis
• ellipsis repair
• island evasion
• preposition stranding generalization
• questions under discussion
• recoverability
• structured meanings