An experimental perspective on embedded gapping in Persian

Bîlbîie, Gabriela; Faghiri, Pegah

doi:10.1515/tlr-2022-2097

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…(52) […] we want to treat your POWs [prisoners of war] with dignity and we hope that you do ours as well. (COCA, spoken, 2008-) Third, languages may differ with respect to the preference between an elliptical construction and its non-elliptical counterpart: our experimental results from English show that, without embedding, there is a general preference for non-gapping constructions in English (as observed by Carlson 2001); on the other hand, no clear preference for either gapping or non-gapping construction was attested in Romance languages (Bîlbîie et al 2021), whereas in Persian, a clear general preference for gapping was observed (Bîlbîie & Faghiri 2022). The fact that gapping has a very low frequency in language use in English (Tao & Meyer 2006) could be related to this ellipsis penalty in this language.…”

Section: Towards a Construction-based Fragment Analysismentioning

confidence: 62%

“…If the true factive predicate penalty comes from the fact that the gapped clause must address the same QUD as the antecedent clause, we expect it to be universal. Recent experimental work (also based on several acceptability judgments tasks) by Bîlbîie & de la Fuente (2019) for Spanish, Bîlbîie et al (2021) for Romanian and Bîlbîie & Faghiri (2022) for Persian show that embedded gapping is possible in these languages, and that non-factive verbs embed more easily than factive ones; and among factive verbs, semi-factive (e.g. cognitive) predicates embed more easily than true factive (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…heard=COP.1SG that Ali cloth=EZ local 'On the wedding night, Ava wears a white dress and I have heard (that) Ali a traditional cloth.' (Bîlbîie & Faghiri 2022) If one tries to explain the specific behaviour of embedded gapping in English, this could be related to the availability of competing variants. First, the fact that English has two options for embedding, namely, with and without THAT, imposes the selection of one of them for embedded gapping (and fragments in general).…”

Section: A Cross-linguistic Perspective On Embedded Gappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the ban on embedded gapping does not seem to be a strong constraint, as shown by the empirical evidence from other languages, such as Persian (Farudi 2013, Bîlbîie & Faghiri 2022), Spanish (Bîlbîie & de la Fuente 2019) and Romanian (Bîlbîie et al 2021), where the gapped clause can appear in an embedded configuration, violating the ‘No Embedding Constraint’ (see Section 5.5).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, it is assumed that a Tense Phrase (TP) from a matrix clause may not dominate a vP from an embedded one; therefore, the low coordination account of gapping automatically rules out violations of the 'No Embedding Constraint.' However, the ban on embedded gapping does not seem to be a strong constraint, as shown by the empirical evidence from other languages, such as Persian (Farudi 2013, Bîlbîie & Faghiri 2022, Spanish (Bîlbîie & de la Fuente 2019) and Romanian (Bîlbîie et al 2021), where the gapped clause can appear in an embedded configuration, violating the 'No Embedding Constraint' (see Section 5.5).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Factivity and complementizer omission in English embedded gapping

Bîlbîie¹,

Fuente²,

Abeillé³

2022

J. Ling.

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Taking as a starting point the variation in introspective judgments on embedded gapping in English in the literature, the main goal of this paper is to test the ‘No Embedding Constraint’ experimentally. Building on a first experimental study designed to measure the interaction between that-omission and factivity in English embedded complement clauses, we conducted two experiments testing the role of the complementizer in embedded gapping, paying special attention to the semantic nature of the matrix predicates (non-factives vs semi-factives vs true factives). Our results show, on the one hand, that the ‘No Embedding Constraint’ makes too strong claims that are not backed up by our experimental findings, and, on the other hand, that embedded gapping is affected by both the presence/absence of that and by the semantic class of the matrix predicate in English. In particular, embedded gapping seems to be more acceptable under non-factive verbs, especially in the absence of a complementizer. Both constraints (that-omission and factivity) can be accounted for by a constructionist fragment-based analysis, where the gapped clause is a non-finite phrase that has to address the same Question Under Discussion as its source. This explains, in turn, why embedded gapping under true factive predicates is considered significantly less acceptable. We show that the acceptable cases of embedded gapping involve true syntactic embedding (so, the matrix clause has no parenthetical use). We conclude that English has the same sensitivity to the semantic class of the matrix predicate as other languages, but that the requirements on the presence/absence of that are English specific.

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Section: Towards a Construction-based Fragment Analysismentioning

confidence: 62%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Cross-linguistic Perspective On Embedded Gappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Factivity and complementizer omission in English embedded gapping

Bîlbîie¹,

Fuente²,

Abeillé³

2022

J. Ling.

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Complementizer deletion in embedded gapping in Spanish

Bonke

Repp

2022

The Linguistic Review

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Gapping in embedded environments may occur in two configurations: (i) the whole coordination containing both conjuncts is embedded (= embedded gapping, EG), (ii) the second (i.e. elliptical) clause is embedded within its own conjunct (= single conjunct embedded gapping, SCEG). Languages seem to differ in their restrictions on these two structures: EG in some languages does not allow for a complementizer in the elliptical conjunct, while it does in other languages. SCEG is outright unacceptable in some languages but acceptable in other languages. Overall, languages seem to fall into two groups such that one group allows a complementizer in the elliptical conjunct of EG and generally allows SCEG, whereas the other group allows neither. We present four experiments in Spanish on the acceptability of the complementizer que ‘that’ in the elliptical conjunct in EG. Our results suggest that que in Spanish EG is overall subject to similar restrictions as SCEG gapping: There are different degrees of degradation depending on the (type of) embedding verb without outright unacceptability. While the relevant property has been argued to be factivity for SCEG, we argue that it is not the factivity of the embedding verb as such that drives acceptability, but assertion embedding. We outline a theoretical proposal building on existing accounts of structural ambiguity in gapping, the truncation of complement CPs under some verbs including factives, and the general flexibility of the semantic/pragmatic categories factivity and assertion.

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Phasehood and embedded gapping in Spanish

Jung

2022

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper argues that the phasehood of the embedded CP determines the possibility of embedded gapping and accounts for the difference between English and Spanish in this regard. I argue that phasehood inheritance plays a central role in licensing embedded gapping along the lines of Wurmbrand’s (2017) phase-based approach to embedded stripping and provides a principled account of how languages differ in this respect. Assuming that ellipsis targets the complement of a phase head (Van Craenenbroeck 2004; 2010; Gengel 2009; Rouveret 2012), I argue that Spanish allows embedded gapping in which FocP is a phase, and the ellipsis site is the complement of Foc (i.e., TP). In contrast, English does not allow gapping in embedded clauses with overt complementizers, in which case CP is a phase, and the node targeted by ellipsis is FocP rather than TP. However, the absence of the complementizer renders embedded gapping acceptable; if CP loses its phasehood by deleting the complementizer, FocP becomes a derived phase, and the ellipsis site is TP. In this view, the crosslinguistic variation with respect to embedded gapping is attributed to the phasehood of the embedded CP, which sheds new light on the No Embedding Constraint on gapping.

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An experimental perspective on embedded gapping in Persian

Cited by 3 publications

References 36 publications

Factivity and complementizer omission in English embedded gapping

Factivity and complementizer omission in English embedded gapping

Complementizer deletion in embedded gapping in Spanish

Phasehood and embedded gapping in Spanish

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