Dutch preposition stranding and ellipsis: ‘Merchant’s Wrinkle’ ironed out

This paper provides an explanation for the unexpected ban on preposition stranding by wh-R-pronouns under sluicing in Dutch. After showing that previous prosodic and syntactic explanations are untenable, we propose that the observed ban is a by-product of an EPP condition that applies in the PP domain in Dutch. Our analysis revolves around the idea that ellipsis bleeds EPP-driven movement, an idea that already has empirical support from independent patterns of ellipsis found in English and in other structural domains in Dutch. Our claim is that: (1) R-pronominalization involves a pronominal argument of P moving to the periphery of its extended PP domain (PlaceP) in order to satisfy a PP-internal EPP condition, (2) this EPP-driven movement is bled under sluicing, and (3) because SpecPlaceP is the ‘escape hatch’ through which R-pronouns must move in order to exit the PP domain to form preposition stranding configurations, bleeding the EPP-driven movement of R-pronouns to SpecPlaceP therefore precludes R-pronouns from undergoing the wh-movement required to form a sluicing configuration.

Changes outside of the CCore

This chapter shows the broader applicability of the constructional approach. It looks at three well-documented developments in English that do not fall into the category of ‘core phenomena’ as understood in Chapter 3, reflexivity, do-support and preposition stranding. These changes are not as central to the expressive function of language as argument structure, operator/scope, and similar phenomena. The chapter argues that these phenomena provide additional evidence that the constructional approach is well-suited for providing genuine explanations for language change and variation.

Preposition Stranding vs. Pied-Piping—The Role of Cognitive Complexity in Grammatical Variation

Grammatical variation has often been said to be determined by cognitive complexity. Whenever they have the choice between two variants, speakers will use that form that is associated with less processing effort on the hearer’s side. The majority of studies putting forth this or similar analyses of grammatical variation are based on corpus data. Analyzing preposition stranding vs. pied-piping in English, this paper sets out to put the processing-based hypotheses to the test. It focuses on discontinuous prepositional phrases as opposed to their continuous counterparts in an online and an offline experiment. While pied-piping, the variant with a continuous PP, facilitates reading at the wh-element in restrictive relative clauses, a stranded preposition facilitates reading at the right boundary of the relative clause. Stranding is the preferred option in the same contexts. The heterogenous results underline the need for research on grammatical variation from various perspectives.

The Replacement of Direct Objects and Directly Linked Gerunds by Prepositional ones after shirk, refrain and lack in Modern English, with Special Reference to Clause Negation

In most Eastern European languages, clause negation typically triggers the replacement of a “direct” case such as the accusative by a less direct one like the genitive. In English, the contrast is – with several verbs – partially paralleled by that between directly linked complements and their prepositional counterparts. This corpus-based paper explores the relevant behaviour of three verbs which possess an intrinsic negative semantics: shirk, refrain (in earlier stages of Modern English), and lack. It is found that negated clauses definitely promote a) prepositional objects with all three verbs and b) prepositional gerunds after shirk. In the case of refrain, the historical British database displays only a weak tendency for negated clauses to favour the increasingly common prepositional gerund. The prepositional variant turns out to be virtually absent from the passive of shirk, a fact assumed to be due to the general avoidance of preposition stranding in favour of available transitive structures. With lack, the rivalry between the two object variants is additionally constrained by two prosodic tendencies, the preference for phrasal upbeats and sentence end-weight. Throughout, American English displays a distinctly greater sensitivity to clause negation than British English.

Clausal Ellipsis in Jibbali: The Case of Sluicing

This study investigates the syntax of sluicing in Jibbali from a generative perspective to identify its morphological and syntactic properties. It also seeks to provide an explanation for the preposition stranding sluices that seem to violate of the Preposition Stranding Generalization (PSG) posited by Merchant (2001). The study concludes that sluicing exists in Jibbali and that it results from an overt wh-movement operation plus IP ellipsis at PF. Furthermore, it is argued that Jibbali sluicing allows for two sources of clausal ellipsis, referred to herein as sluicing and pseudosluicing. Both sluicing and pseudosluicing are derived by wh-movement and TP deletion despite the fact that sluicing stems from regular wh-questions, whereas pseudosluicing derives from a copular underlying source, i.e., cleft wh-questions. With regards to preposition-less (P-less) sluices, it is argued that such sluices are instances of pseudosluicing and that they do not involve preposition stranding as wh-movement in pseudosluicing proceeds from Spec TP. The proposed analysis for both forms of clausal ellipsis rests upon two arguments: a) the analysis of pronouns in the elided clause as copular pronouns, and b) the restriction on clefting non-nominal expressions in Jibbali which mirrors the parallelism between P-less sluices and cleft wh-questions in the language. 

Case and preposition stranding in Old English free relatives

Taylor (2014) observes that some of the factual claims made in Allen (1980), the most thorough examination of free relatives in Old English to date, are not entirely correct. Taylor presents some examples that Allen’s analysis of Old English free relatives does not account for and proposes an alternative analysis in which the relative pronoun can be internal to the relative clause and the case of the pronoun is determined by the case hierarchy proposed by Harbert (2007) for Gothic. This corpus-based study supplies new data showing that while Taylor’s relative-internal analysis is needed for some examples, the evidence does not support the suggested case hierarchy except in regulating optional case attraction. Latin influence may account for examples that do not fit the usual patterns.