<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
Dear all,<br>
<br>
Ellipsis in coordination was a hot topic in typology in the 1970s
(following Ross's famous 1970 paper where the term "gapping" was
introduced), and there was a chapter on this in Mallinson &
Blake (1981).<br>
<br>
The most recent treatment that I am aware of is in my 2007 paper on
coordination (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://zenodo.org/record/1133876">https://zenodo.org/record/1133876</a>), where I discuss
ellipsis in §6 on 9 pages, trying to avoid decisions on constituent
structure. I report on Sanders's (1977) paper which made some
interesting claims about types of ellipsis in different languages.
Unfortunately, neither Sanders's old paper nor this part of my more
recent paper have been followed up on – maybe because "ellipsis" is
not easy to identify to begin with in many languages?<br>
<br>
As Adam Tallman has noted (here and in various other venues),
constituent structure is not always determinate because different
phenomena may argue for different structures – this is of course an
experience familiar to typologists. So we'd need comparative
concepts that do not make reference to abstract and
language-dependent notions such as constituent structure.<br>
<br>
Now Adam Singerman might object: "it's not clear that RNR is a
"thing" to be explained in of itself. So the issue might be moot."<br>
<br>
I completely agree that RNR (what I call <i>right periphery
ellipsis</i> [RPE] in 2007) may not be a "unified phenomenon" in
the sense that the *mechanisms* that different languages (or
different speakers) use to state the generalizations may be rather
different. And this is a familiar type of claim – people have argued
for the "disunity" of VSO order, for the disunity of ergativity, and
so on.<br>
<br>
But this is the very basis for the observation that cross-linguistic
comparison cannot be based on language-particular mechanisms, but
must be based on comparative concepts that abstract away from the
mechanisms. Generative linguists have typically had the hunch that
we need to figure out these mechanisms if we want to do useful
typology, because whatever explanations we come up with must reside
in these mechanisms ("universal grammar" etc.).<br>
<br>
But there is an alternative view/option, which has recently also
been advanced by some (nominally) generative linguists such as Julie
Anne Legate and Amy Rose Deal (as discussed in this blogpost:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2481">https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2481</a>). For example, Deal (2016) says, in
her discussion of the disunity of split ergativity, that "hierarchy
effects <strong>ultimately must arise external to the grammar
itself</strong>, from the organization of human cognition and
communication – a conclusion in line with various approaches that
locate the origin of these effects extra-grammatically".<br>
<br>
So if we find cross-linguistic generalizations about coordination
ellipsis that are not reflections of a unique mechanism, they may
still have a unified explanation ("external to the grammar", i.e.
independent of language-particular mechanisms).<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 29.09.21 um 18:23 schrieb Adam
Singerman:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAFZcNW8OtMc=Qpbma3kCoZbynDbYtF0p5WUF6sR07ObSJ6eLHw@mail.gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Dear Adam,
I don't believe that the RNR [right node raising] issue is as damning for syntactic theory
as you do (this shouldn't surprise anyone who's talked with the both
of us, as we generally have different takes on the successes/failures
of syntactic theory). On the contrary, I think the RNR issue nicely
illustrates the fact that there will be empirical generalizations in
individual languages that require some kind of formalization to be
stated in the first place, whatever the ultimate verdict is on the
formal apparatus that the generalizations are first couched in. Even
if we take Chaves's analysis as correct (namely, that RNR is really
the conflation of three separate phenomena: VP/N' deletion,
extraposition, backward periphery deletion), we will still need a
formal apparatus to define these phenomena. A formal syntactician
would probably say that the crosslinguistic version of RNR is not
capturable as a comparative concept in the sense of Haspelmath because
what defines RNR — whether it's taken to be a phenomenon in of itself
or a conflation of three separate phenomena, as Chaves argues — is
still ultimately formal. So this is probably a good example of how
there are parts of speakers' linguistic competence which need to be
described, analyzed and theorized, but which do not lend themselves in
an obvious way to cross-linguistic comparison outside of a formal
framework. Unless of course I have misunderstood Martin's point about
comparative concepts...?
Abraços,
Adam
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/">https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/</a></pre>
</body>
</html>