36.2004, Confs: Panel at LIV Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística: "Ellipsis and the architecture of language: When and why can an element be elided? (2nd ed.)" (Spain)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2004. Mon Jun 30 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2004, Confs: Panel at LIV Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística: "Ellipsis and the architecture of language: When and why can an element be elided? (2nd ed.)" (Spain)

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Date: 30-Jun-2025
From: Carlos Martínez-García [carlma27 at ucm.es]
Subject: Panel at LIV Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística: "Ellipsis and the architecture of language: When and why can an element be elided? (2nd ed.)"


Panel at LIV Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística:
"Ellipsis and the architecture of language: When and why can an
element be elided? (2nd ed.)"
Short Title: LIV Simposio SEL

Date: 26-Jan-2026 - 29-Jan-2026
Location: Madrid, Spain
Contact: Carlos Martínez-García
Meeting URL: https://www.sel.edu.es/liv-simposio-madrid-2026/

Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories; Pragmatics; Semantics;
Syntax
Subject Language(s): English (eng)
                     Spanish (spa)
Language Family(ies): Romance

Submission Deadline: 30-Sep-2025

Description:
The goal of this panel is to maintain the meeting space for linguists
working on ellipsis that was initiated at the LII Simposio de la SEL,
held in Madrid in 2024. Given that the panel was successful in 2024
(researchers from different universities and countries, such as Spain,
Germany, the United States and Poland attended), we believe that the
session can provide a fruitful meeting space at the LIV Simposio de la
SEL.
Ellipsis is the anaphoric phenomenon that has aroused most interest in
formal linguistics, within generative grammar and outside it (Pollard
& Sag 1994; Dalrymple 1999; Merchant 2001). By the term ellipsis, we
refer to those cases in which a part of a sentence can be interpreted
semantically by virtue of a discourse antecedent, even though it lacks
phonetic content. Since the syntactic component systematically
associates sound and meaning, the challenge posed by ellipsis lies in
explaining why the absence of phonetic content does not entail a loss
of meaning. In other words, how can meaning be generated without
sound? These questions were raised in the first edition of this panel,
and continue to be of scientific interest today.
Although some authors have argued that the semantic content of
ellipsis can be recovered without the aid of syntax (Culicover &
Jackendoff 2005), empirical evidence points to the contrary. The fact
that unpronounced material is accessible to syntactic operations, such
as extraction, agreement, or quantificational scope, provides a strong
argument in favor of the hypothesis that, in cases of ellipsis, what
is unpronounced has an abstract syntactic representation (Johnson
2001; Merchant 2001; Saab 2021). However, this type of argument does
not yield the same results for all types of ellipsis. This has led to
an intense debate about which ellipsis phenomena have syntactic
structure (Hankamer & Sag 1976).
Ellipsis phenomena have been classified into two types. We refer to
argument ellipsis and non-argumental ellipsis. In argument ellipsis,
nominal arguments of the verb are omitted, as in (1B). In
non-argumental ellipsis, the elided material does not represent a
syntactically homogeneous class: the elision may scope a finite
clause, as in (2a), or be circumscribed to a smaller sentence. For
example, in (2b), the elided part is a constituent of the SD, while in
(2c) the head of the SV is omitted (the parentheses indicate the
elided part of the speech, and the hooks indicate what serves as its
antecedent).
(1) Argument ellipsis
A: ¿Ha comprado [Juan] [libros]?
     ‘Did John buy books?’
B: Sí, (Juan) ha comprado (libros).
    ‘Yes, (John) has brought (books).’
(2) Non-argument ellipsis
a. Juan [quiere trabajar], pero no sabe de qué (quiere trabajar).
[sluicing]
    ‘John wants to work, but (he) does not know on what (he wants to
work).’
b. El [libro] de Cervantes y el (libro) de Quevedo están ahí. [elipsis
nominal]
    ‘The book by Cervantes and the (book) by Quevedo are here.’
c. Juan [comprará] el queso y Pedro (comprará) el vino. [gapping]
    ‘John will buy the cheese and Peter (will buy) the wine.’
The study of these two types of ellipses offers a unique opportunity
to shed light on key aspects of human language architecture. How does
the computational component interact with each interface of external
systems? What constraints does the computational component impose on
syntactic representations? What constraints affecting syntactic
representations are instead imposed by the interfaces? What structure
do the interfaces with which the computational component interacts
possess?
Goals:
This panel is open to papers that address any of the basic questions
raised by the study of ellipsis, such as the following, among others.
I. What can be elided?
According to its semantic interpretation, Standard Spanish
distinguishes two types of null arguments: definite and indefinite.
Definite ones are mostly licensed in subject position of finite
sentences, and receive a definite interpretation (Chomsky 1981;
Brucart 1987; Fernández Soriano 1989; Holmberg 2005; Camacho 2013).
Indefinite ones are mostly licensed in object position, and inherit
their indefinite interpretation from a non-specific, indefinite
antecedent, usually a bare noun (Campos 1986; Brucart 1999; Laca 2013;
Verdecchia 2022). Do the syntactic and semantic differences exhibited
by these two kinds of null arguments justify a separate analysis for
both phenomena, or can they be explained under a unified analysis
(Duguine 2014)? What other types of argument ellipsis exist in Spanish
whose syntactic and semantic properties are incompatible with the
pro-drop parameter (Ortega-Santos 2023)?
Contrary to what happens in Standard Peninsular Spanish, certain
dialects of Spanish allow definite null arguments in object position.
These dialects are in contact with on-Indo-European languages that
license definite null objects (Suñer & Yépez 1988 for Quechua-contact
Quechua Spanish; Palacios 2000 for Paraguayan Spanish in contact with
Guarani; Guijarro-Fuentes et al. 2022 for Basque Spanish in contact
with Basque). How can the micro-variation observed in this group of
dialects be formalized? What mechanisms explain the transmission of
this phenomenon from one language to another? What representation do
null arguments receive in the minds of this group of bilingual
speakers?
II. When?
Within generative grammar, ellipsis has traditionally been analyzed as
the result of a post-syntactic operation, either (i) as an operation
in Phonological Form (Tancredi 1977; Chomsky & Lasnik 1993; Merchant
2001), or (ii) as a reconstruction process in Logical Form (Zagona
1988; Lobeck 1995). However, within the Minimalist Program, the
opposite idea has been defended: ellipsis as a syntactic operation
(Aelbrecht 2010; Baltin 2012). According to this hypothesis, ellipsis
renders the elided structure inaccessible for further syntactic
operations. Therefore, syntactic movement from the elided material
would only be possible if it occurred ‘before’ the ellipsis operation.
The main argument in favor of this hypothesis is that, for certain
types of ellipsis, movement from the omitted structure is possible in
some cases, but not in all. This is the case for some null complement
anaphora. While the extraction of a relative pronoun is possible from
within the null complement of modal verbs such as poder, deber, or
querer (Busquets 2006; Dagnac 2010; Saab 2021), as shown in (3a),
argument clitics cannot be extracted from the elided SV (Brucart 1987;
Depiante 2000), as seen in (3b).
(3) a. Juan besa a quien puede (besar).
         ‘John kisses whom (he) can (kiss).’
     b. Juan no la puede leer, pero María la puede *(leer).
         ‘John cannot read it, but Mary can (read) it.’
What other morpho-syntactic processes are blocked by ellipsis? Does
the fact that some processes cannot occur in ellipsis contexts help to
identify the grammatical level where the ellipsis takes place (Lasnik
1999)?
III. Why?
A syntactic constituent must maintain an identity relation with its
antecedent to be elided. Is this relation semantic or syntactic, or
both (Fiengo & May 1994; Johnson 2001; Merchant 2001)?
In addition to this identity relationship, what syntactic conditions
must be in place to license ellipsis? How do the syntactic conditions
that give rise to different types of elliptical constructions vary
from language to language? Are there specific parameters for ellipsis
or does the observed cross-linguistic variation derive from
independent principles?
For full list of references, please see the event website.
Guidelines:
With this proposal, we invite abstracts on one of the panel topics.
Oral presentations will be 20 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes for
discussion. Please indicate in your submission that your abstract
should be considered for the panel. For the panel we only accept oral
presentations. We will notify the authors by October 31, 2025.
Submission guidelines: Abstracts must be no longer than 500 words,
including references, font size 12, single-spaced. Submissions are
limited to a maximum of one individual and one joint abstract per
author (or two joint abstracts) for the entire conference. Submissions
will open September 1, 2025. Please submit here:
https://www.sel.edu.es/liv-simposio-madrid-2026/
Organizing Committee of the Panel:
Alejo Alcaraz, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM)
alejo.alcaraz at uam.es
Adolfo Ausín, Michigan State University (MSU)
ausin at msu.edu
José Camacho, University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)
jcamach at uic.edu
Carlos Martínez-García, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
carlma27 at ucm.es



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