Speaker: Dennis Ott (University of Groningen)
Title: Peripheral fragments: an ellipsis approach to dislocation
Time/Date: Thursday, Oct 27, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461
Germanic-type dislocation constructions, in which a dislocated XP (dXP) appears at the periphery of a clause containing a resumptive anchor, have been a long-standing problem for syntactic theory. In both Contrastive Left-dislocation (CLD; extensively studied since Cinque’s 1977 and Vat’s 1981 seminal works) and its counterpart Right-dislocation (RD; largely neglected in theoretical works, but see Zwart 2001, Averintseva-Klisch 2008, and Truckenbrodt forthcoming), the dXP is an optional “add-on” to a complete (gapless) clause, suggesting that it is base-generated clause-externally. At the same time, however, the dXP shows connectivity into the clause (case agreement with the pronominal anchor, reconstruction). This paradoxical situation has typically been ‘resolved’ by resort to stipulative mechanisms relating a clause-external adjunct (the dXP) to the movement chain comprising the pronominal anchor and its trace (cf., e.g., van Riemsdijk & Zwarts 1974, Zaenen 1997, Wiltschko 1997, and Frey 2004).
In this talk, I propose an alternative to these approaches, according to which the dXP in CLD and RD is a remnant of clausal ellipsis (cf. Tanaka 2001, a.o., on Japanese RD). That is, the underlying structure of dislocation constructions involves two juxtaposed clauses which are structurally parallel, modulo dXP vs. anchor. At PF, one of the two clauses (the “left” one in CLD, the “right” one in RD) undergoes IP-ellipsis (as familiar from sluicing, fragment answers, etc.; see Merchant 2001, 2004), leaving only the dXP. On this approach, connectivity effects in CLD and RD are due to ordinary reconstruction of the dXP internally to the reduced clause (cf. den Dikken et al. 2000 on pseudoclefts). I show that this analysis straightforwardly explains all central properties of CLD and RD, reducing the phenomenon traditionally labeled “dislocation” to A-bar movement and IP-ellipsis at PF.