Exclaiming non-sententially: exclamative sluices and the (non-elliptical) nature of ellipsis constructions

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• exclamatives
• non-sentential utterances
• ellipsis
• dialogue
• sluicing
• emotion in grammar