Whamit!

The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

Ling-Lunch 10/4 - Maziar Toosarvandani

Speaker: Maziar Toosarvandani
Title: Gapping is VP-ellipsis
Date/Time: Thursday, Oct 4, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

Johnson (2009) argues that gapping — e.g. “Some had ordered mussels, and others swordfish” — does not arise through VP-ellipsis because gapping has properties that VP-ellipsis does not. He proposes instead that the gap in gapping arises through ‘low coordination’ and across-the-board movement. I first show that Johnson’s across-the-board movement account fails to generate gapping in coordination structures with corrective but (Vicente 2010, Toosarvandani, to appear). Then, I revive a version of the ellipsis account in which VP-ellipsis applies to low-coordination structures. Not only does this correctly generate gapping in corrective but sentences, but once the information-structural effects of low coordination and ellipsis are taken into consideration, it also derives the unique properties of gapping.