Can gapping be embedded? Experimental evidence from Spanish

Bîlbîie, Gabriela; Fuente, Israël de la

doi:10.5334/gjgl.782

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…emotive) ones. In Spanish, as shown in Bîlbîie & de la Fuente (2019), embedded gapping is as acceptable as embedded non-gapping under non-factive verbs, such as creo ‘I think’ in Example (48).

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…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%

“…Second, the existence of an alternative elliptical construction in English, which is not available in the other languages under discussion, could also explain the specific constraints on embedded gapping in English. In particular, English has an alternative with pseudogapping that Spanish, Romanian or Persian do not have (Farudi [28] On the basis of corpus data (Garcia-Marchena 2019), Bîlbîie & de la Fuente (2019) suggest the second hypothesis is correct: Spanish QUE is compatible with a non-finite clause (a fragment answer, for instance), unlike French QUE; French embedded gapping behaves more like English in this respect (Bîlbîie et al 2021).…”

Section: A Cross-linguistic Perspective On Embedded Gappingmentioning

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%

“…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: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

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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An experimental approach to parallelism in ellipsis

Bîlbîie

Fuente

2021

Current Issues in Linguistic Theory

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The present study investigates parallelism constraints in Romance gapping with pro-drop. We provide empirical evidence from two acceptability judgment tasks in Romanian and Spanish, that syntactic parallelism in gapping is less strict than traditionally assumed. Parallelism constraints are stronger at the discourse and information structure levels than at the syntactic level. Our experimental findings show that gapping with pro-drop is as acceptable as without pro-drop, challenging the double foci analysis and supporting the topic-focus pattern for gapping constructions. At the semantic level, our data show that the contrast in gapping is not always established explicitly; more generally, they show that one cannot make a correlation between contrast and subject (null vs overt) expression in Romance.

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The empirical turn and its consequences for theoretical syntax

Abeillé

2024

Theoretical Linguistics

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In a pioneer paper, Featherston (Featherston, Sam. 2007. Data in generative grammar: The stick and the carrot. Theoretical Linguistics 33. 269–318) advocated the use of better controlled data in theoretical linguistics. Despite diverging on many aspects, most syntactic theories are now testing their hypotheses with more data than a few linguists’ intuitions. I will examine the consequences of this empirical turn on two syntactic phenomena: long-distance dependencies (LDD) and ellipsis. In a series of recent experiments (Liu, Yingtong, Elodie Winckel, Anne Abeillé, Barbara Hemforth & Edward Gibson. 2022. Structural, functional and processing perspectives on linguistic islands effects. Annual Review of Linguistics 8. 495–525), most of the syntactic constraints (‘island constraints’) on LDD have shown less crosslinguistic variation and more cross-construction variation than previously thought. Corpus and experimental data have also shown elliptical clauses to be more flexible than expected under deletion-under-identity theories (Poppels, Till. 2022. Explaining ellipsis without identity. The Linguistic Review 39. 341–400). These are challenges for most syntactic theories, which call for taking discourse factors more seriously into account.

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Can gapping be embedded? Experimental evidence from Spanish

Cited by 10 publications

References 40 publications

Factivity and complementizer omission in English embedded gapping

Factivity and complementizer omission in English embedded gapping

An experimental approach to parallelism in ellipsis

The empirical turn and its consequences for theoretical syntax

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