LING819
Seminar in Syntactic Theory: Ellipsis
Spring 2015

Week by week readings
Jan. 28   Lasnik and Funakoshi ms. "Ellipsis in Transformational Grammar"; Ross (1969) "Guess Who"
Feb. 4     Continue Jan. 28 readings. Handout on Sluicing and island repair. Add Grimshaw (1979) "Complement Selection and the Lexicon" (esp. for her arguments that subcategorization is at least in part syntactic, and for her syntactic treatment of 'Null Complement Anaphora').
Feb. 11  Grimshaw (1981) [on why no verbs take only concealed questions]; Merchant on Swiping; Merchant The Syntax of Silence Chapter 4, Section 1 and Chapter 5 [The link is to the 1999 thesis. As far as I can tell the 2001 book is identical in content.]
[Suggested reading: Williams (1977) "Discourse and Logical Form" (esp. Section 2.1 on sloppy identity)]
Feb. 18  Lasnik review of Merchant's book; Lasnik " When can you save a structure by destroying it?"
[Suggested reading: Chung, Ladusaw and McCloskey "Sluicing and Logical Form"]
[[Digression on WH-Q interactions, further motivating the CLM treatment of WH-trace as an indefinite.]]
Feb. 25  Sluicing ≠Clefting: Merchant 4.4.2; HO Appendix A
              Strong features and repair: Lasnik 1999 "On Feature Strength"
March 4   Lasnik (2001) "A note on the EPP";  HO on EPP; HO on optionality of object shift/raising to object [supplemental: Lasnik (2001) "Subjects, Objects, and the EPP"]
March 11  Boskovic and Lasnik (1999) " How strict is the cycle?"; Subject Condition repair vs. EPP repair: Merchant 5.2.3; Lasnik and Park (2003)   "The EPP and the Subject Condition under Sluicing"
March 25-April 1  Antecedent Contained Deletion
Start with the classic article by Bouton; Sag's thesis pp. 45-50 and 79-81; and pp. 11-14 of May's book Logical Form. Here's a handout on ACD; and an early overview in my Lectures on Minimalist Syntax 42-60.
A couple more things to look at are Baltin's article arguing that there is no ACD, and Larson and May's reply; and Fox's article on ACD and copy theory.
Some alternatives to the QR account:
Vehicle change: Wyngaerd&Zwart 1991
Raising to Spec of AgrO: Hornstein 1994 (and, for a counter-argument, Kennedy 1997)
[Supplemental readings: Johnson "Object Positions" (on overt object shift in English); Tiedeman on ACD/Right Roof paradox]
April 8 ACD continued         
[Supplemental readings: Merchant on Voice and Ellipsis; a couple of my things discussing Clause-mate conditions - On the Development of Case Theory ;  Clause-Mate Conditions ; On Repair by Ellipsis ; McCawley Where do Noun Phrases Come From ; Wyngaerd&Zwart 1999]
April 15  Finish ACD. Then "Identification":
Lobeck chapter; Saito and Murasugi.
[Supplemental reading : Grosu on the Right Roof Constraint]
-April 15   Paper proposal due [Any topic you like as long as it has some connection to elipsis. Proposal should be 2-3 pages with relevant bibliography]
-April 22  Student presentations (30 minutes each + up to 15 for discussion):
-April 29  Student presentations (30 minutes each + up to 15 for discussion)
-May 6   Special guest! Pranav Anand will talk about his project to develop a searchable data base of ellipsis phenomena. Bring in your ideas about what you would like to be able to search for. Here's a draft of his project. And here's a preliminary annotation guide.
-May 15   Papers due

useful links

Merchant publications

Lasnik publications

pdf locker