24.2646, Review: Syntax; Dutch; English: Aelbrecht (2010)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-24-2646. Mon Jul 01 2013. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 24.2646, Review: Syntax; Dutch; English: Aelbrecht (2010)

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Reviews: Veronika Drake, U of Wisconsin Madison
Monica Macaulay, U of Wisconsin Madison
Rajiv Rao, U of Wisconsin Madison
Joseph Salmons, U of Wisconsin Madison
Mateja Schuck, U of Wisconsin Madison
Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin Madison
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Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:17:26
From: Meredith Johnson [majohnson25 at wisc.edu]
Subject: The Syntactic Licensing of Ellipsis

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-643.html

AUTHOR: Lobke  Aelbrecht
TITLE: The Syntactic Licensing of Ellipsis
SERIES TITLE: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today   149
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2010

REVIEWER: Meredith Johnson, University of Wisconsin Madison

SUMMARY

This book proposes a novel theory of ellipsis licensing, based primarily on
data from Dutch modal complement ellipsis (MCE). In MCE constructions, the
infinitival complement of a modal is elided, stranding the modal and its
subject. The author makes two major claims: first, that ellipsis is licensed
through an Agree relationship between an [E]-feature and the ellipsis
licensing head; and second, that ellipsis occurs immediately after the
licensing head is merged, rendering the ellipsis site inaccessible for further
syntactic operations.

In Chapter 1, the author provides an overview of the various analyses of
ellipsis phenomena. In the first part of the chapter, Aelbrecht distinguishes
between structural and non-structural approaches to ellipsis. Next, the author
introduces the two restrictions that any theory of ellipsis must account for:
recoverability and licensing. In this work, Aelbrecht adopts the Phonetic Form
(PF) deletion approach to ellipsis and addresses the issue of ellipsis
licensing.

In Chapter 2, Aelbrecht describes MCE, a previously unstudied form of
ellipsis. In Section 2.1, the author starts with an overview of the Dutch
modal system. Aelbrecht shows that Dutch distinguishes epistemic, deontic and
dynamic modal verbs. She argues that, syntactically, deontic and epistemic
modals are raising verbs, while dynamic modals are control verbs. Furthermore,
she presents evidence that modals head a ModP that takes a Tense Phrase (TP)
infinitival complement.

Section 2.2 provides a detailed description of MCE. MCE is licensed by only
root (i.e. deontic and dynamic) modals; ellipsis with epistemic modals results
in ungrammaticality. Aelbrecht argues that MCE targets the complement of TP.
She shows that MCE deletes verbs, objects, VP-level adjuncts, negation and
auxiliaries, while subjects and temporal adjuncts survive the process.
Interestingly, MCE displays an extraction asymmetry; subjects can move out of
the ellipsis site, while objects cannot. Subject extraction is found with
deontic modals; because they are raising verbs, their subjects are
base-generated in the specifier of the embedded vP. Since the subjects of
deontic modals survive ellipsis, they must be able to move out of the ellipsis
site. In contrast, object extraction is blocked; both wh-movement and
scrambling are banned with MCE.

Chapter 3 provides justification for the author’s two main claims about the
licensing of ellipsis. Aelbrecht’s first claim is that ellipsis is licensed by
an Agree between an [E]-feature and the ellipsis licensing head. Once an Agree
relation is established, the complement of the head bearing the [E]-feature is
elided. This analysis is essentially a refinement of Merchant’s (2001)
approach to ellipsis, in which the presence of an [E]-feature on a head
triggers ellipsis of its complement. In order to justify this analysis, the
author provides evidence from a variety of ellipsis phenomena where the
ellipsis licensor does not have to be adjacent to the ellipsis site.

The second claim is that ellipsis occurs as soon as the licensing head is
merged. The effect is twofold: the ellipsis site is frozen for further
syntactic operations; and lexical insertion at PF is blocked. This approach
differs from previous analyses, such as Merchant (2001), who argues that
ellipsis occurs post-syntactically. Aelbrecht shows that her “derivational
ellipsis” analysis accounts for extraction asymmetries between subjects and
objects. She shows that if the [E]-feature is located on T and the Mod head
licenses ellipsis, then subjects have a position to which they can move
between the ellipsis site and licensor; namely, Spec, TP. In contrast, objects
do not have a similar escape hatch. Wh objects move to Spec, CP, which is
above the licensing head; therefore, they cannot move out of the ellipsis site
before the [E]-feature is checked and no further syntactic operations can
apply. Similarly, scrambled objects move to a position higher than the modal
(as evidenced by the surface word order), and thus also will not be able to
move out of the ellipsis site.

In Chapter 4, Aelbrecht shows that data from four other elliptical phenomena
is consistent with her analysis of ellipsis licensing. Section 4.1 discusses
sluicing. The author follows van Craenenbroeck (2004), who argues that
sluicing structures involve a double CP structure. The head of the higher CP
(identified as ForceP) licenses ellipsis of the embedded TP; because of this,
the lower CP (identified as FocP) intervenes between the licensing head and
the ellipsis site, providing an escape hatch for wh-extraction.

Section 4.2 deals with verb phrase ellipsis. Aelbrecht follows Sag (1976),
Zagona (1988) and Lobeck (1995) (among many others) and assumes that T is the
licensing head. Furthermore, she assumes that vP is the constituent targeted
by verb phrase ellipsis (Johnson 2001, Merchant 2008). Her theory predicts
that extraction out of the ellipsis site should be possible, as the projection
VoiceP sits between the licensing head and ellipsis site. This prediction is
borne out; wh-extraction and adjunct extraction are both possible with verb
phrase ellipsis.

Pseudogapping is the subject of Section 4.3. Pseudogapping is identical to
verb phrase ellipsis, except that the object moves out of the verb phrase
before ellipsis takes place. Aelbrecht follows Gengel (2007b), and assumes
that the displaced object undergoes movement to a focus position between TP
and vP. Since the landing site of focus movement is between the licenser and
ellipsis site, extraction is possible.

The last section discusses the British English ‘do’ construction. Unlike verb
phrase ellipsis, the ‘do’ construction does not allow wh-extraction or
pseudogapping; however, subject raising is still possible. Aelbrecht argues
that the ‘do’ construction is licensed by ‘do’ itself, which occupies v, and
that it elides a VP constituent. This explains the limited extraction
possibilities; the licenser triggers ellipsis of its complement, so there is
no landing site for displaced constituents. Subjects of unaccusative verbs are
able to move out of the ellipsis site because they are attracted by the
licenser of ellipsis, v. When v is merged, it can attract the subject to its
specifier before triggering ellipsis of the VP.

Chapter 5 concludes by reviewing the author’s two main claims about the
licensing of ellipsis. The author outlines two goals for further research:
seeing if other ellipsis phenomena can be accounted for under this analysis;
and finding an answer for the longstanding question of why only certain
syntactic heads are capable of licensing ellipsis.

EVALUATION

A strong merit of this book is that Chapter 2 provides a very thorough
description of a previously unstudied form of ellipsis. For that reason alone,
this book is worth reading. On the theoretical side, Aelbrecht describes very
clearly in Chapter 3 why the extraction asymmetry in MCE poses a problem for
previous analyses of ellipsis. Furthermore, the new analysis proposed by the
author neatly accounts for the data.

I was not left convinced that the analysis presented in the book can be
extended to account for all ellipsis phenomena. Of course, ellipsis phenomena
are incredibly diverse, so developing an analysis of all instances of ellipsis
was outside the scope of this book. Rather than viewing the following as
veritable “shortcomings” of this work, I would instead frame them as issues to
consider in future research.

While this new analysis of ellipsis certainly seems to cover the data from
MCE, I was left wondering if the new data warranted such a departure from
other theories of ellipsis. The book would have benefited from a stronger
rebuttal against approaches that equate phase heads with ellipsis licensors,
such as Gengel (2007b). In Chapter 3, the author argues that the extraction
data from MCE pose a problem for phase-based approaches. Aelbrecht notes that
an object that undergoes wh-movement or scrambling in non-elliptical
constructions would have to move out of the vP before the C head is merged.
Under a phasal approach to ellipsis, the fact that objects cannot survive
ellipsis cannot readily be explained. There are other logically possible,
although potentially undesirable, ways to account for this asymmetry in a
phase-based approach to ellipsis. For example, one could argue that ellipsis
bleeds A’-movement of objects, or that the domains that constitute phases are
subject to cross-linguistic variation (as argued for by Bošković 2005 and
Müller 2007, among others ).

It is also unclear how this new approach could account for the licensing of
antecedent-contained deletion (ACD). Aelbrecht argues explicitly that both
covert and overt movements are blocked from the ellipsis site after the
licensing head is merged; however, most accounts of ACD resolution rely on
either Quantifier Raising (QR) (e.g. Fiengo and May 1994) or covert-rightward
movement (Fox 2002) to obviate the infinite-regress problem. It’s possible
that a cover-rightward movement analysis would work if that movement occurred
before the ellipsis licensing head is merged, but this would need to be made
explicit in future work.

The most obvious target audience for this book is syntacticians interested in
ellipsis phenomena. However, this work addresses many other issues, making it
a useful read for those interested in phases, Agree operations, scrambling and
other forms of A’-movement, and the syntax of modal constructions.

REFERENCES

Baltin, Mark. 2007. Deletion versus pro-forms: A false dichotomy? Ms, New York
University.

Bošković, Željko. 2005. On the locality of left branch extraction and the
structure of NP. Studia Linguistica 59(1): 1-45.

van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen. 2004. Ellipsis in Dutch Dialects. Utrecht: LOT
Dissertation Series.

Fiengo, Robert and Robert May. 1994. Indices and Identity. Cambridge: MIT
Press.

Fox, Danny. 2002. Antecedent-Contained Deletion and the Copy Theory of
Movement. Linguistic Inquiry 33(1): 63-96.

Gengel, Kirsten. 2007a. Phases and ellipsis. In Proceedings of the 37th
meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Emily Efner & Martin Walkow
(eds.). Amherst MA: GLSA.

Gengel, Kirsten. 2007b. Focus and Ellipsis: A Generative Analysis of
Pseudogapping and other Elliptical Structures. PhD dissertation, University of
Stuttgart.

Johnson, Kyle. 2001. What VP-ellipsis can do, and what it can’t, but not why.
In The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, Mark Baltin & Chris Collins
(eds), 439-479. Oxford: Blackwell.

Lobeck, Anne. 1995. Ellipsis. Functional Heads, Licensing and Identification.
Oxford: OUP.

Merchant, Jason. 2001. The Syntax of Silence. Sluicing, Islands and the Theory
of Ellipsis. Oxford: OUP.

Merchant, Jason. 2008. An asymmetry in voice mismatches in VP-ellipsis and
pseudogapping. Linguistic Inquiry 39(1): 169-179.

Müller, Gereon. 2007. On Deriving CED Effects from the PIC. Linguistic Inquiry
41(1): 35-82.

Sag, Ivan. 1976. Deletion and Logical Form. PhD dissertation, MIT.

Zagona, Karen. 1988. Proper government of antecedentless VPs in English and
Spanish. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6: 95-128.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Meredith Johnson is a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her
main research interests are in syntactic theory; specifically, ellipsis
phenomena, restructuring constructions, and the syntax of Algonquian
languages.








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