LINGUIST List 6.1281

Wed Sep 20 1995

Sum: V-raising and VP ellipsis

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Zeljko Boskovic, Summary: V-raising and VP ellipsis

On June 30, 1995 I posted a query concerning interaction of V-raising and
VP ellipsis. More precisely. I asked whether there are V-raising languages
that allow ellipsis of VPs whose heads have undergone V-raising, thus
escaping deletion. (In such languages, the counterpart of John kissed Mary
and Peter kissed too would be grammatical.)
I thank Mark Baltin, Pier Marco Bertinetto, Peter-Arno Coppen, Annabel Cormack,
Luis Lopez, Jan Odijk, Robin Schafer, and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio for their
responses. For useful discussion, I also thank Hoski Thrainsson and Hubert
Truckenbrodt.
It turns out that a number of languages that allow V-raising do not allow VP
ellipsis at all, for example, German, Dutch, Icelandic, and most Romance
languages.
However, there are a few V-raising languages that have been argued to allow
ellipsis of VPs whose heads escape deletion by undergoing V-raising. (I will
refer to such ellipsis as remnant VP ellipsis). Thus, Doron (1990) and Ale
de Boer (no exact reference)
argue that Hebrew allows remnant VP ellipsis. McCloskey (1991) makes
the same claim for Irish. (Schafer 1994, however, notes a contrast between
Breton
ellipsis constructions and what McCloskey finds with Irish). Otani and Whitman
(1991) argue that remnant VP ellipsis is allowed in several languages, in
particular,
Japanese,Korean and Chinese. Hoji (1994), however, questions their conclusion
for Japanese.

References
Doron, E. 1990. V-Movement and VP-Ellipsis. ms. The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem.
Hoji, H. (1994) Null Object Construction and Sloppy Identity in Japanese.
 ms. USC.
McCloskey, J. 1991. Clause Structure, Ellipsis, and Proper Government in Irish.
 Lingua 85, 259-302.
Otani, K. and J. Whitman 1991. V-raising and VP-ellipsis. Linguistic
 Inquiry 22, 345-358.
Schafer, R. 1994. Nonfinite Predicate Initial Constructions in Breton, UC
 Santa Cruz dissertation.

Zeljko Boskovic
University of Connecticut
boskovicuconnvm.uconn.edu