Dissecting Adpositional Particle Constructions: Remarks from Ellipsis

Abstract

This paper contributes to the study of inflected reduplicating adpositional particle constructions by investigating their behavior under ellipsis. It will be shown that just like any separable particle, inflected reduplicating adpositional particles can be severed from the rest of the clause via the phenomenon of particle stranding and this phenomenon has properties that bear on the analysis of these constructions. The novel observations in the domain of ellipsis are predicted by some but not all approaches to inflected adpositional particle constructions, particularly they motivate rethinking some aspects of the syntactic approaches currently available.