Please join us for ling-lunch this week:
Speaker: Hiroshi Hasegawa (Senshu University/Harvard University)
Time: Thurs 2/25, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: Swiping – preposition stranding + remnant PP extraposition analysis
Swiping is a form of ellipsis (sluicing) where a preposition appears after the remaining wh-element (John was talking, but I don’t know who to). According to Merchant (2002), Swiping is derived from application of wh-movement pied-piping the preposition, followed by sluicing (PF IP ellipsis) and PF head movement of the wh to the front of the preposition. I propose an alternative account, where Swiping is a result of wh-movement stranding a preposition, followed by remnant PP extraposition and IP ellipsis (Sluicing). I will discuss various advantages of our analysis over Merchant’s analysis, and argue that this interestingly complex phenomenon results from interactions not only of syntactic principles, but also of various others factors, namely, certain factors related to PF/phonology/prosody (e.g. PF island repair effects and Obligatory Contour Principle), to parsing/processing (e.g. crossing constraint), and to focus/information structure. I will give some cross-linguistic considerations, taking up relevant examples drawn from English, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and German data.