Verb-second and the verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis debate

Verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis (VPE), when a verb is stranded outside of the VP-sized ellipsis site in which it originated, has been identified in a number of languages (Irish, McCloskey 1991; Hebrew, Doron 1991, Goldberg 2005; Greek, Merchant 2018; Uzbek, Gribanova 2019, i.a.), and has been invoked productively in analyses investigating the position to which verbs move and the timing of verb movement in the grammar. Recently, Landau (2018, 2019, to appear) proposes a phase-based negative licensing condition on head-stranding ellipsis that precludes verb-stranding VPE altogether. He claims that apparent verb-stranding VPE must be reanalyzed either as Argument Ellipsis (Oku 1998; Kim 1999; Takahashi 2008), or a clause-sized ellipsis that strands main verbs (Gribanova 2017). This article approaches this debate through an analysis of head movement and head-stranding ellipsis in the Indic verb-second (V2) language Kashmiri, arguing that Landau’s phase-based approach encounters empirical challenges in accounting for variation in the presentation of ellipsis in V2 languages and requires an unconventional approach to V2, at odds with recent accounts of Kashmiri V2 (Bhatt 1999; Munshi and Bhatt 2009; Manetta 2011) and mainstream views of V2 generally (e.g. Holmberg 1986; Travis 1991; Vikner 1995; Zwart 1997). While the present article argues in favor of the standard account of ellipsis (Merchant 2001, 2008), we affirm the important contribution of Landau’s work in identifying challenges facing any account of head-stranding ellipsis licensing. At issue is the larger question of whether and how verb-stranding ellipses can be used to better understand head movement.

How do different language typologies influence causal event conceptualizations?

This study investigated whether crosslinguistic differences in the expression of causality influence causal conceptualization of observed events in 3- to 4-year-old Swiss-German-learners and Turkish-learners. In Swiss-German, causality is mainly expressed lexically (e.g., schniidä “to cut”). In Turkish, causality is expressed both lexically, and morphologically with a verbal suffix (e.g., yemek “to eat” vs. yeDIRmek “to feed”). Moreover, unlike Swiss-German, Turkish allows argument ellipsis (e.g. “Mary pushed”). We used pseudo-verbs to test if and how well Swiss children inferred a causal meaning from lexical constructions compared to Turkish children tested in three conditions: lexical, morphological, and morphological constructions with object ellipsis. Swiss children and Turkish children in all three conditions reliably inferred causal meanings, and did so to a similar extent. The findings suggest that children as young as age 3 make use of the specific features of how their native language expresses causality to infer causal meanings.

On null arguments and phi-features in second language acquisition

Saito, Mamoru. 2007. Notes on East Asian argument ellipsis. Language Research 43. 203–227 argues that argument ellipsis (AE) is available only in languages that lack phi-feature agreement. Accordingly, Japanese, but not English, permits AE. Under Saito’s theoretical framework, this paper compares experimental data from L1 Japanese learners of L2 English (J-EFL) and L1 English learners of L2 Japanese (E-JFL). Given that sloppy and quantificational reading arises from an ellipsis operation (Hankamer, Jorge & Sag, Ivan. 1976. Deep and surface anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 7. 391–426, Takahashi, Daiko. 2008. Noun phrase ellipsis. In Miyagawa, Shigeru & Saito, Mamoru (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Japanese linguistics, 394–422. Oxford: Oxford University Press, among others), we hypothesize that J-EFL learners, but not E-JFL learners, allow the reading in point with null arguments: AE is available only in the grammar of J-EFL learners, forced by the lack of phi-features in their L2 English grammar, due to L1 transfer. The results from our main study adopting a truth value judgement task supported the hypothesis. Based on our finding, we suggest that correct L2 phi-feature specification can ultimately be obtained when no phi-features are present in L1 (Ishino, Nao. 2012. Feature transfer and feature learning in universal grammar: A comparative study of the syntactic mechanism for second language acquisition. Doctoral dissertation: Kwansei Gakuin University, Miyamoto, Yoichi. 2012. Dainigengo-ni okeru hikenzaiteki-na yōso-ni kansuru Ichikōsatsu [A study on null elements in second language acquisition]. Paper presented at the 84th ELSJ annual general meeting: Senshu University, 26 May).

On null objects in Egyptian Arabic

This paper provides a descriptive account and a syntactic analysis of the grammatical distribution and properties of null objects (NOs) in Egyptian Arabic. In particular, it is shown that NOs cannot be analyzed as instances of null pro or as variables bound by a null topic operator. A Verb-Stranding VP-Ellipsis account is also shown to be empirically non-viable. Instead, I argue that NOs result from Argument Ellipsis (AE), an operation that targets arguments for deletion at PF. This AE analysis has several empirical advantages, including an account for (a) the different-entity interpretation of NOs, (b) the fact that PP and CP internal arguments can be null, (c) the availability of both strict identity and sloppy identity readings with null PPs and CPs, (d) the indefiniteness and inanimacy restrictions on the antecedents of NOs, and (e) the fact that subjects, as opposed to objects, cannot undergo AE. Following existing proposals in the generative literature on null arguments, I provide a minimalist implementation of the AE operation, whereby principles of φ-agreement, case licensing, the NP/DP distinction, and a notion of relativized phasehood, all conspire to determine when NOs occur and when they are disallowed in the language.

On the Nonexistence of Verb-Stranding VP-Ellipsis

An increasingly popular analysis of object gap sentences in many languages derives them in two steps: (a) V-raising out of VP, and (b) VP-ellipsis of the remnant, stranding the verb (V-stranding VP-ellipsis, VSVPE). For Hebrew, Hindi, Russian, and Portuguese, I show this analysis to be inadequate. First, it undergenerates elliptical objects in various environments, and second, it overgenerates nonexisting adjunct-including readings. For all the problematic data, simple argument ellipsis provides a unified explanation. The absence of VSVPE in languages that do allow V-raising and Aux-stranding VP-ellipsis raises an intriguing problem for theories addressing the interaction of head movement and ellipsis.

Null Objects in Korean: Experimental Evidence for the Argument Ellipsis Analysis

Null object (NO) constructions in Korean and Japanese have received different accounts: as (a) argument ellipsis ( Oku 1998 , S. Kim 1999 , Saito 2007 , Sakamoto 2015 ), (b) VP-ellipsis after verb raising ( Otani and Whitman 1991 , Funakoshi 2016 ), or (c) instances of base-generated pro ( Park 1997 , Hoji 1998 , 2003 ). We report results from two experiments supporting the argument ellipsis analysis for Korean. Experiment 1 builds on K.-M. Kim and Han’s (2016) finding of interspeaker variation in whether the pronoun ku can be bound by a quantifier. Results showed that a speaker’s acceptance of quantifier-bound ku positively correlates with acceptance of sloppy readings in NO sentences. We argue that an ellipsis account, in which the NO site contains internal structure hosting the pronoun, accounts for this correlation. Experiment 2, testing the recovery of adverbials in NO sentences, showed that only the object (not the adverb) can be recovered in the NO site, excluding the possibility of VP-ellipsis. Taken together, our findings suggest that NOs result from argument ellipsis in Korean.

Derivational argument ellipsis

The present article is concerned with two important observations about argument ellipsis. One is that it may apply to arguments that do not enter into agreement relationship with functional categories but not to those that do; the other is that extraction out of elided arguments is possible in Japanese. In order to account for these properties, I adopt the theory of derivational ellipsis, according to which elliptic constituents are marked as such as early as in the syntactic component, and the hypothesis that v, V, and an internal argument can be combined in different ways in different languages. The proposed analysis does not only account for the relevant facts about argument ellipsis in Japanese, but also extends to other languages that exhibit slightly different behaviors with regard to null arguments.