Filler-gap mismatches

[Carl Pollard]

[Sorry if this is a duplicate, wasn't sure whether it weant to the
whole list -- CJP]

>From kaplan at parc.xerox.com Fri May  4 18:22:20 2001
From: kaplan at parc.xerox.com
Subject: Re: Filler-gap mismatches
To: Carl Pollard <pollard at ling.ohio-state.edu>
cc: pollard at ling.ohio-state.edu, sag at csli.stanford.edu,
        hpsg-l at lists.stanford.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 15:21:48 PDT

(Carl,  you might have to forward this again)

Regarding

> 5)a. Kim didn't think of the possible nasty consequences, or that
>      he might be wrong.
>
>   b. *Kim didn't think of that he might be wrong, or the possible
nasty
>      consequences.

> 6)a. Before you do that, please think of the possible consequences
>      and that you might be wrong.
>
>   b. *Before you do that,  please think of that you might be wrong
>      and the possible consequences

This pattern is pretty easy to explain, given the way coordination is
set up in LFG (e.g. Kaplan & Maxwell, 1988, reprinted in Dalrymple et al
1995, from CSLI).  The only categorial matching is defined by a general
c-structure rule schema that requires, for example, that the category of
only the left-most conjunct be identical to the category of the
coordination as a whole, so the NP object of "of" can be realized as the
sequence
	NP and/or S
but not
	S and/or NP
For the second one, the coordination as a whole would also be an S, and
we claim that is not allowed as an object of a preposition.   (We argue
that other restrictions on the second conjunct are functional in
nature--e.g. both conjuncts must be open (have an argument not locally
expressed) or both must be open.  See also Dalrymple & Kaplan, 2000 (in
Language)).

I haven't thought about  7), and it doesn't strike me as particularly
good.

> 7) ?Sandy could think of only that he might be wrong, and not of
>    what the actual consequences might be if he were right.

If this is supposed to be acceptable, an obvious account would be to say
that "only + S" is  some sort of NP.  These kinds of cases seem to
relate to the squishiness of categories (ala an old Haj Ross paper,
maybe others).  "Whether" seems to make clauses even more nouny than
"only", and that is probably what we would say about 8):

8) The whole question of whether Dana is a gunrunner never came up.

An argument from somewhere in the literature (I talked to Annie about
this and we couldn't remember where this kind of thing was discussed)
involves the contrasts:

9a)  That the Earth is flat is obvious.
 b)  *Is that the Earth is flat obvious?
 c)   Is the fact that the earth is flat obvious?

10a)  Whether John left isn't clear.
  b)    Is whether John left clear?

The contrast in (10) suggests that the subject position in an inverted
sentence requires a true NP, and that-clauses don't qualify.  But (11)
shows that a "whether-clause seems perfectly OK, and thus that a
whether-clause is more nouny than a that-clause, maybe is in fact an NP.
 In other words, whatever explains the acceptable of 10b) would explain
the acceptability of 8).

 Ron