The syntax of Why-Stripping

Yoshida, Minoru; Nakao, Chizuru; Ortega-Santos, Iván

doi:10.1007/s11049-014-9253-9

Cited by 41 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…The most recent account of Why-VP clauses is proposed in Yoshida et al (2015), who accommodate Why-VP as a special case of Why-stripping, argued in turn to be a type of clausal ellipsis parallel to that which was developed for sluicing (Ross 1969), and later for fragment answers (Merchant 2005). Under this view, Why-VP reflects the operation of an ellipsis process which eliminates the subject and tense because they are recoverable on the basis of an antecedent TP.…”

Section: Against Ellipsismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To look for an antecedent for Why-VP essentially means to identify the missing subject, but since there is rarely a parallel VP to the VP of Why-VP, figuring out what would count as an antecedent proved to be nearly impossible. Yoshida et al (2015) largely base their argument that various Why-XP fragments are an instance of clausal (TP) ellipsis on observed connectivity effects between a provided context and the material they observe to be missing in said fragments. They propose that why is base generated in spec-CP, above a focus position (FocP), to which the non whremnant is ultimately raised.…”

Section: Antecedence and Given-nessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The modal in Why-VP is most saliently interpreted as would in (41), which is not epistemic. Thus, Weir's amendment comes closer to understanding the interpretive properties of Why-VP, but inherits most of the difficulties already raised for Yoshida et al (2015) since it is equally committed to the ellipsis component. Additionally, the ability interpretation of can in (40a) and (40b) suggests that Whystripping fragments permit a wider range of modal interpretations than are observed in Why-VP, as Why-VP is never interpreted as involving the modal force of can.…”

Section: Weir's Amendmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modality force and syntax in an understudied class of reduced why-questions in English

Zaitsu

2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper analyzes the syntactic and interpretive components of a frequently used but understudied type of reduced why-question in English, referred to as Why-VP, as in why take Structure of Japanese? Using a substantial corpus of naturally occurring examples, it is argued that why in Why-VP is in fact a head which selects a null infinitival head, hosting in its specifier a structural subject, pro, and which in turn selects the familiar verbal projections (Voice/V). Previous work on Why-VP has suggested that it is necessarily elliptical and that it is necessarily rhetorical (conveying a preference). These assumptions led to proposals appealing to special compositional technologies. Analysis of the naturally-occurring examples, however, reveals that Why-VP retains a true interrogative interpretation. The syntactic structure proposed, in which Why-VP is an infinitival wh-question, predicts that it should have a modal interpretation, following Bhatt's (1999) analysis of covert modality in embedded wh-infinitivals. It is the modal interpretation characteristic of Why-VP that contributes to the rhetorical flavor, but that also allows for the genuine-question reading. Thus, we need rely only on independently available and familiar compositional mechanisms to understand the observed pragmatic effects.

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Section: Against Ellipsismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Antecedence and Given-nessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Weir's Amendmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modality force and syntax in an understudied class of reduced why-questions in English

Zaitsu

2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…So far we have restricted our attention to sluicing in order to establish the core paradigm of PGs in the remnants of elided clauses, but other clausal ellipsis constructions have been argued to have basically the same type of derivation as sluicing (essentially, TP-ellipsis), such as the Stripping construction (Depiante 2000;Hankamer and Sag 1976;Merchant 2004;Reinhart 1991 among others;cf. Culicover and Jackendoff 2005;May 1991;Reinhart 1991 among others) and the Why-Stripping construction Yoshida et al 2012). 31 There have been some attempts to explain "S-structure effects" in PG licensing from the perspective of the Minimalist Program, in which "S-structure" is abandoned as a level of representation (Nissenbaum 2000;Nunes 2001Nunes , 2004.…”

Section: Other Types Of "Clausal Ellipsis" Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parasitic Gaps licensed by elided syntactic structure

Yoshida¹,

Hunter

Frazier³

2014

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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This study provides an argument for syntactic approaches to sluicing. We base our study on the novel observation that Parasitic Gaps (PG) are licensed in sluicing contexts. We show that, in order for PGs to be licensed in sluicing contexts, overt wh-movement must occur, leaving a real gap in the ellipsis site. Therefore, the ellipsis site has the full-fledged syntactic structure that licenses PGs.

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“…Collins (1991) does not provide an analysis to explain why this is the case. Yoshida et al (2015) suggest that tenseless clauses are a type of why-stripping in which the VP is a non-wh-remnant.…”

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confidence: 99%

Structural and semantic ambiguity of why-questions: An overlooked case of weak islands in English

Chapman

Kučerová

2016

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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We argue that English why-questions are systematically ambiguous between a purpose and a reason interpretation, similarly to Mandarin, Russian, and Polish (contra Stepanov & Tsai 2008). We argue that the distinct semantic interpretations correspond to two distinct base-generated positions of why. While reason why is base-generated within CP (Rizzi 2001, Ko 2005), purpose why is adjoined to vP (Stepanov & Tsai 2008). Furthermore, we show that English purpose why, similarly to previously reported data from Mandarin, is only compatible with dynamic predicates with agentive subjects. We argue that this selectional restriction follows from two properties: (i) why semantically requires a proposition as its argument, and (ii) only dynamic predicates with agentive subjects have a syntactic structure that accommodates two adjunction sites of the relevant semantic type, i.e., they contain two distinct propositional levels (Bale 2007) and therefore two attachment sites for why. In contrast, propositionally simple predicates only have one propositional level and hence only one possible attachment site, which corresponds to the reason interpretation of why. Evidence for this proposal comes from the observation that only the lower why - associated with the purpose reading - is sensitive to negative islands, which suggests that its attachment site is below negation (vP), whereas the higher why is insensitive to island effects of this sort, which suggests that its base generated position is above negation (CP).

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The syntax of Why-Stripping

Cited by 41 publications

References 47 publications

Modality force and syntax in an understudied class of reduced why-questions in English

Modality force and syntax in an understudied class of reduced why-questions in English

Parasitic Gaps licensed by elided syntactic structure

Structural and semantic ambiguity of why-questions: An overlooked case of weak islands in English

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