Spanish null complement anaphora at the grammar-discourse interface

The study of null complement anaphora (NCA) is important for the grammar-discourse interface as it seems to incarnate some of the core processes commonly found in other discourse phenomena, namely: reference, anaphora, ellipsis, inference, salience, or accommodation. Although NCA has been studied extensively, the debate whether it is an elliptical or an anaphoric process is still ongoing. This paper contributes to the view of NCA as a deep anaphor by providing evidence from Spanish discourse. I argue that NCA is an anaphor that selects the most prominent antecedent in well-defined discourse hierarchical structures. My analysis is mainly based on the comparison among Spanish neuter pronouns and NCA, and on the observed similar behavior shown by NCA and pronouns under discourse embedding conditions. Previous accounts on NCA are reviewed (Depiante 2000, 2001; Williamson 2012), and a tentative analysis of VP ellipsis based on discourse relations (Hardt & Romero 2004) is applied to Spanish NCA.

Null Complement Anaphora

In this chapter, the different positions regarding NCA in the literature are discussed and the analysis proposed in Hankamer and Sag (1976) is favored. NCA is taken to be a type of deep anaphor as opposed to a surface anaphor, in Hankamer and Sag’s proposed typology. It behaves like a deep anaphor in that it can take pragmatic antecedents, missing antecedents, and does not seem to require strict syntactic parallelism with its antecedent. In addition, NCA does not allow overt or covert extraction out of it, which provides evidence in favor of the view that NCA is to be represented as an element with no internal syntactic structure. It is also shown that the types of predicates that select NCA seem to be lexically determined, since no reliable pattern has yet been found to be able to predict which predicates select it.

Dutch

This chapter discusses ellipsis in Dutch and the dialects of Dutch. It provides detailed information on the major types of ellipsis as they have been presented in Part III of this handbook: gapping and stripping, predicate ellipsis (VP-ellipsis and pseudogapping), Conjunction Reduction and Right-Node Raising, sluicing, fragments, nominal ellipsis, Comparative Deletion, and Null Complement Anaphora. It discusses the main insights from the literature as well as new observations with respect to these constructions. The final section shows that the Dutch dialects display an enormous amount of variation concerning ellipsis constructions. In particular, it examines the variation in NP-ellipsis with possessive, demonstrative, and adjectival remnants and variation with respect to sluicing.

Indonesian

This chapter describes ellipsis phenomena in Indonesian (Austronesian; Malayo-Polynesian). Several ellipsis phenomena are attested in Indonesian, including sluicing, fragments, auxiliary-stranding verb phrase ellipsis, pseudogapping, gapping, stripping, conjunction reduction, null complement anaphora, and ellipsis within nominal phrases. Indonesian has the potential to contribute meaningfully to our understanding of the ways in which these phenomena manifest cross-linguistically. One notable feature of Indonesian ellipsis, which is considered in detail, is that it permits prepositions to be omitted in some elliptical contexts, despite preposition stranding being prohibited in non-elliptical contexts. This is unexpected, given the cross-linguistically robust Preposition Stranding Generalization (Merchant 2001), which links a language’s ability to omit a preposition under ellipsis to its ability to strand a preposition via extraction of its complement. Phenomena affected include sluicing, fragments, pseudogapping, stripping, and gapping.

The Oxford Handbook of Ellipsis

This handbook is the first volume to provide a comprehensive, in-depth, and balanced discussion of ellipsis phenomena, whereby a perceived interpretation is fuller than would be expected based solely on the presence of linguistic forms. Natural language abounds in these apparently incomplete expressions, such as I laughed but Ed didn’t, in which the final portion of the sentence, the verb ‘laugh’, remains unpronounced but is still understood. The range of phenomena involved raise general and fundamental questions about the workings of grammar, but also constitute a treasure trove of fine-grained points of inter- and intralinguistic variation. The volume is divided into four parts. In the first, the authors examine the role that ellipsis plays and how it is analyzed in different theoretical frameworks and linguistic subdisciplines, such as HPSG, construction grammar, inquisitive semantics, and computational linguistics. Chapters in the second part highlight the usefulness of ellipsis as a diagnostic tool for other linguistic phenomena including movement and islands and codeswitching, while Part III focuses instead on the types of elliptical constructions found in natural language, such as sluicing, gapping, and null complement anaphora. Finally, the last part of the book contains case studies that investigate elliptical phenomena in a wide variety of languages, including Dutch, Japanese, Persian, and Finnish Sign Language.

Hungarian

This chapter reviews ellipsis in Hungarian, providing examples of the majority of ellipsis types that are discussed in this book. The discussion starts with nominal ellipsis and shows that, unlike ordinary noun phrases, possessed noun phrases do not show evidence for ellipsis, V-stranding ellipsis, and pseudogapping) and includes a section on preverb-stranding ellipsis and the analytical challenges it represents. Clausal ellipsis phenomena (sluicing, fragments, stripping) are treated with reference to single remnant ellipsis and multiple remnant ellipsis as well, the latter including a description of gapping. Separate sections are dedicated to right-node raising, null complement anaphora, and ellipsis in comparative clauses. Analytical and theory-specific details about the structure of Hungarian are introduced along the way.

Null Complement Anaphors as Definite Descriptions

This paper develops the observation that, for many predicates, Null Complement Anaphora (NCA) is like anaphora with a descriptively empty definite description (Condoravdi & Gawron 1996, Gauker 2012). I consider how to distinguish this sort of NCA from pronouns theoretically, and then observe an unnoticed exception to the pattern. For verbs like "notice", NCA is neither like a definite description nor like a pronoun, raising a new puzzle of how to represent it

Null Complement Anaphors as Definite Descriptions

This paper develops the observation that, for many predicates, Null Complement Anaphora (NCA) is like anaphora with a descriptively empty definite description (Condoravdi & Gawron 1996, Gauker 2012). I consider how to distinguish this sort of NCA from pronouns theoretically, and then observe an unnoticed exception to the pattern. For verbs like "notice", NCA is neither like a definite description nor like a pronoun, raising a new puzzle of how to represent it