Date: 03-Mar-2011
From: Lena Ibnbari <ibnbari bgu.ac.il>
Subject: Preposition Stranding in Right Node Raising
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English allows Preposition stranding (P-stranding) in Right Node
Raising (RNR):
(a) Girls arrived with, and/but boys arrived without a textbook.
(b) John left before, and/but Mary left after the chairman's speech.
(c) The cat sat on, and the dog lied under the bed.
Russian also allows such sentences:
(d) Petja zabolel do _, a Maša zabolela posle èkzamena.
Peter fell-ill before but Masha fell-ill after the-exam
The preposition can be present in the second conjunct only:
(e) Mary ignored, but John spoke to the boss.
(f) Petja prosto ne zametil _, a Olja tak narošno ne
Peter just neg. noticed but Olya part. intentionally neg.
obratila vnimanija na razbitoje okno.
paid attention on broken window
'Peter just didn't notice, but Olya intentionally didn't pay attention to the
broken window.'
If the single preposition is stranded in the first conjunct, however, the
result is still good in English but bad in Russian:
(g) John spoke to, but Mary ignored the boss.
(h) *Olja narošno ne obratila vnimanija na _ ,
Olya intentionally neg. paid attention on
a Petja prosto ne uvidel razbitoje okno.
and Peter just neg. saw broken window
Intended: 'Olya intentionally didn't pay attention to, and Peter just didn't
see a broken window.'
I'm interested to learn how other languages behave in these
environments. Do you speak an English-type language in which all of
these examples are good? A Russian-type language in which (a-f) are
good but (g)-(h) are bad? A different type of language?
I'm especially curious about the data in Scandinavian languages, but
also Romance languages. I'll be grateful for any relevant data or
comments.
Looking forward,
Lena Ibnbari.
Linguistic Field(s):
Syntax
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