The morphophonology of ellipsis

Abstract

This paper attempts to pinpoint the derivational timing of ellipsis by examining how it interacts with other phenomena whose timing is better understood. It is demonstrated that for morphophonological processes such as external sandhi and allomorphy, material adjacent to an ellipsis site cannot “see” ellipsis internal material. Under the mainstream [E]-based approach to ellipsis, this result indicates that the silence characterizing ellipsis arises early at PF, consistent with non-application of Vocabulary Insertion (and inconsistent with phonological deletion). However, it would also follow straightforwardly if ellipsis sites were sent to the interfaces alone, the moment they are licensed in the syntax (Aelbrecht 2010). This approach involving the Segregated Transfer of ellipsis sites is pursued here: beyond the mounting syntactic evidence supporting it, it is shown to be preferable on these post-syntactic grounds as well, requiring fewer assumptions to capture these novel findings.

More doubts on verb‐stranding VP ellipsis: Reply to Simpson 2023

“…While it is known that certain agreement mismatches between the antecedent and target clauses are tolerated by ellipsis, they all must be resolved at the derivational point at which ellipsis occurs and no later. Aelbrecht 2010, Johnson 2015, and Sailor 2022 document a range of bleeding effects that ellipsis has on movement and agreement dependencies that cross its boundaries. Crucially, in all of them, the higher dependent is located above the head that triggers ellipsis.…”