Clausal ellipsis (e.g., sluicing and fragment answers) involves a movement that can sometimes appear to violate island constraints. This squib focuses on a relatively understudied type of clausal ellipsis, stripping, and argues based on its unique properties that its apparent ability to violate islands is an illusion created by the evasion strategy – a parse that does not involve any islands. I also argue that stripping has the same underlying operations as sluicing and fragment answers, and thus the evasion strategy available to stripping should also be available to those other clausal ellipses, supporting Barros et al.’s (
Clausal ellipsis involves movement out of the ellipsis site plus deletion of a clause (
(1)
Someone here speaks Wampanoag – guess whoi [TP ti speaks Wampanoag].
(2)
A: Who speaks Wampanoag?
B: Pati [TP ti speaks Wampanoag].
(3)
Pat speaks Wampanoag, (but) not Chrisi [TP ti speaks Wampanoag].
This squib focuses on a property well-known to clausal ellipsis – that is, the movement of the remnant in these ellipses can sometimes appear to be insensitive to island constraints (first observed by
(4)
a.
They hired someone who speaks a Balkan language – guess which!
(
b.
A: Does Abby speak the same Balkan language that someone in your class speaks?
B: Yeah, Charlie. (
c.
They hired someone who speaks French yesterday, not German.
If we follow the standard analysis of clausal ellipsis, the remnant moves out of a relative clause, which is generally considered to be an island, and yet the result is fine (5a). Without ellipsis, it is not possible to move a
(5)
a.
… guess whichi [tp they hired [Relative Clause someone who speaks ti]]!
b.
*… guess which they hired someone who speaks!
There have been many proposals for the seemingly exceptional island-violating behavior of clausal ellipsis (e.g.
Section 2 provides four novel arguments that the evasion strategy saves island violations in stripping. Yoshida et al. (
Barros et al. (
(6)
They hired someonei who speaks a Balkan language, guess which [TP shei speaks]]!
Assuming the short source is also available to stripping, the stripping sentence (7) should have two potential parses: the long source (8a), whose remnant
(7)
They hired someone who speaks French yesterday, not German.
(8)
a.
… not Germani [TP they hired [Relative clause someone who speaks ti]].
b.
… not Germani [TP she (= the person they hired) speaks ti]].
Barros et al. argued for the evasion strategies in sluicing by showing that when the evasion strategies are blocked (e.g., by replacing the indefinite
All the judgments in this squib come from two informal surveys. In each survey, I asked native speakers to rate sentences on a scale of 1–7, and if they found them grammatical, I further asked them which reading(s) they could get. The first survey involved seven speakers, and later I carried out a follow-up survey with five out of those seven speakers. The order in which I present the sentences in this squib does not necessarily follow the temporal order in which I carried out the surveys. Thus, to be clear, for each sentence I will report the total number of speakers I asked and their judgments.
The discussion so far focuses on sentences that contain islands, specifically relative clause islands, which might lead us to think that the short source is only relevant to these sentences, but it does not have to be. This section argues that stripping sentences can have the short source, even when they do not contain any island. Consider (9).
(9)
They said fewer than three students speak French yesterday, and also German.
Following are the two possible parses of (9). The short source (10b) has a different meaning from the long source (10a).
(10)
a.
… and also Germani [TP they said fewer than three students speak ti].
b.
… and also Germani [TP they speak ti].
The long source is compatible with a scenario where they talked about two different groups of students, French speakers and German speakers. The short source, on the other hand, is not compatible with this scenario, and means that they mentioned the same group of students who speak both French and German. Two out of my five consultants could get the short source reading, suggesting that at least for those speakers, the short source is available even when there is no island involved.
As to the long source reading, three out of my five consultants could get it. Though the long source is interesting in its own right, it is beside the point here. The point is to show that the short source reading is available, but not that the long source reading is.
The long source Lucie will admit that she stole ti).
(11)
a.
Lucie will admit that she stole the diamonds if you press her, but not the car.
b.
Lucie did not admit that she stole anything, when we pressed her, except the little red book.
c.
More people said they will vote for Bush, in the last poll, than for Dukakis. (
I leave it to future research exactly which contexts bring out the long source reading easily, but instead focus on the availability of the short source in this squib.
This subsection continues the logic of the previous one by showing that when the short source has a different reading from the long source, we can get the reading of the short source. Consider (12), which differs from (9) minimally in that (12) contains an island.
(12)
They hired someone who speaks French yesterday, and also German.
I put the two potential parses of (12) below, which have different truth conditions:
(13)
a.
… and also Germani [TP they hired [RC someone who speaks tiyesterday]].
b.
… and also Germani [TP she (= the person they hired) speaks ti]].
The island-violating parse (13a) is true if they hired two monolingual speakers, a French speaker and a German speaker. The short source (13b) is only true if they hired a bilingual speaker who speaks both French and German.
Six out of seven speakers rated (12) 7 on a scale of 1–7. I further asked them how many people were hired. Everyone said only one bilingual person was hired, but one consultant said “maybe another interpretation is available, too,” where two monolinguals were hired, but this reading is harder than the interpretation of hiring a bilingual person.
Thus, nearly all the speakers can get the short source reading of (12), an indication that the short source is present. Because (7) is very similar to (12), we may infer that (7) also has the short source.
This subsection takes advantage of the observations in the previous subsections: when the sentence has no island, both the long source and the short source readings are available; but when the sentence contains an island, as in (12), the long source reading disappears for most speakers. This subsection blocks the short source with a contradictory context. In this context, the long source should be the only possible reading for a sentence that doesn’t contain any island. The sentence that contains an island can no longer appear to be island-insensitive.
Recall that the short-source readings in the previous subsections talk about bilingual speakers. We can thus block them with a contradictory context by using
(14)
They said fewer than three monolingual students speak French yesterday, and also German.
(15)
a.
… and also Germani [TP they said fewer than three monolingual students speak ti].
b.
#… and also Germani [TP they speak ti].
In contrast, the following sentence which contains an island was found to be ungrammatical by all my seven consultants:
(16)
*They hired a monolingual who speaks French yesterday, and also German.
Example (16) is bad because neither of its potential parses (17a–b) is possible. The long source (17a) is not available (for different reasons for different speakers: for those who could not get the long source reading for (9) and (14), because the long source reading is somehow not available to begin with, even if there is no island; for those who could get the long source reading for (9) and (14), due to the presence of the island). The short source (17b) is blocked by
(17)
a.
*… and also Germani [TP they hired [RCa monolingual who speaks ti]].
b.
#… and also Germani [TP she (= the person they hired) speaks ti].
The following sentences make the same point but with different lexical items and PP objects.
(18)
a.
They need to find a monolingual speaker of Ch’ol for this course, and also Nahuatl.
b.
They want to drive along the only road to Goose Bay on this trip, and also Nordkapp.
Example (18a) can only mean that they need to find two different monolingual speakers, and (18b) can only mean that they want to drive along two different roads. Compare them with (19), which contains the relative clause island, and should be ungrammatical because the island blocks the long source. All five of my consultants confirmed that there is a contrast between (18a) and (19a), and between (18b) and (19b).
(19)
a.
*They need to find a monolingual who speaks Ch’ol for this course, and also Nahuatl.
b.
*They want to drive along the only road that leads to Goose Bay on this trip, and also Nordkapp.
This subsection makes a similar argument, but with a different language, Russian. Stripping in Russian can appear to be island-insensitive, but only with the short source reading. When the short source is spelled out overtly, it has the same intonation as the intonation of the stripping sentence, suggesting that the short source is indeed the reason why stripping can appear to be island-insensitive in Russian.
Russian has the relative clause island when there is no ellipsis, just like English, but the remnant of stripping can appear insensitive to the relative clause island (20). (20) only has the reading that they hired a single bilingual speaker, suggesting that only the short source is available. Also, (20) is only fine if a significant intonational break precedes
(20)
Oni
They
vchera
yesterday
nanyali
hired
kogo-to,
who-EI
kto
who
govorit
speaks
po-francuzski,
at-French,
a
and
takzhe
also
po-nemecki.
at-German.
‘They hired someone who speaks French yesterday, and also German.’
The meaning of (20) already suggests that its appearance of island-insensitivity is due to the short source. In addition, when the short source is spelled out overtly (21), it also requires the same intonation, where a significant break must immediately precede
(21)
Oni
They
vchera
yesterday
nanjali
hired
kogo-to,
who-EI
kto
who
govorit
speaks
po-francuzski,
at-French,
a
and
takzhe
also
ètot
this
chelovek
person
govorit
speaks
po-nemecki.
at-German.
‘They hired someone who speaks French yesterday, and this person also speaks German.’
Since (20) only has the short source reading, and both (20) and (21) require the intonational breaks, the short source (21) must be the reason why (20) is grammatical.
Yoshida et al. (
(22)
Joe: While Joe was singing, shei noticed the student who met with
Bill: *No, with
If we follow the strict definition at the beginning of this squib that stripping has to occur in coordination, then Yoshida et al.’s examples are not stripping. Because
Returning to the analysis of (22), (23) spells out the possible derivations for the response in (22). In the long source (23a), the matrix subject
(23)
a.
Bill: No, with TP sheinoticed the student who met ti].
b.
Bill: No, with TP {he / the student} met ti].
Yoshida et al. had two controls. In the first control, they tested another dialog with a pronoun instead of an R-expression in the remnant, which would avoid the Condition C violation. The control sentences received higher ratings, suggesting a real Condition C effect for (22). Then they did another control experiment to show that the effect is not due to the implausibility of cataphoricity (where a pronoun linearly precedes the expression it refers to), but to c-command. In this experiment, they kept the R-expression in Bill’s sentence, but varied the position of the pronoun in Joe’s sentence: the pronoun either appears in the adjunct clause (which would not c-command the R-expression in the long source), or in the main clause (which would c-command the R-expression in the long source). Dialogs where the pronoun appears in the adjunct clause receive higher ratings, suggesting that even for cataphoric pronouns, c-command still plays a role.
I agree that the short source is not available to (22); but when the short source is spelled out overtly, it already sounds odd:
(24)
Joe: While Joe was singing, shei noticed the student who met with
Bill: #No, {he / the student} met with
I speculate that (24) is odd because
Besides arguing against the short source, an important claim of Yoshida et al. is that the long source is available to stripping (or what I call supplemental fragments), even when an island is involved. In other words, stripping is genuinely island-insensitive. This seems to directly contradict my findings in subsections 2.2 and 2.3, where most of my consultants reject the long source reading of the stripping sentences that contain an island ((12) and (16)).
I want to briefly discuss two possible reasons why Yoshida et al.’s examples generated apparently contradictory results to mine. One possible reason has to do with the utterance-finality of the correlate (i.e., the phrase in the antecedent that corresponds to the remnant, such as
The second possible reason is that supplemental fragments may be more island-insensitive than stripping. In the informal surveys I elicited judgments of not only stripping, but also supplemental fragments. The short source is generally available to supplemental fragments, but I did not report those judgments in this squib because there were additional complications with the long source of supplemental fragments. Since the long source is not directly relevant to the claim of this squib, I left out supplemental fragments altogether to avoid distraction, and instead report some of the judgments here.
In the follow-up survey, I asked the five consultants who could only get the short source of (12) about (25B), the supplemental fragment counterpart to (12).
(25)
A: They hired someone who speaks French yesterday.
B: Yeah, and also German.
All five of them accepted (25B), and all of them could get the short source reading (13b), where only one bilingual person was hired. Interestingly, four consultants could also get the long source reading (13a), where two monolinguals were hired. Note that the correlate in (25)
This squib has shown that evasion strategies, in particular the short source, are available to stripping, and that the short source must be the reason why the stripping examples discussed in this squib appear to be island-insensitive. Since stripping involves the same underlying operations as other types of clausal ellipses such as sluicing and fragment answers, the evasion strategies that are available to stripping should be available to clausal ellipsis more generally.
Griffiths & Liptak (
This configuration satisfies the licensing condition on ellipsis that has been proposed in the literature. See Merchant (
I will not provide any traditional evidence based on connectivity effects for the short source here, which a reviewer asked about. Evidence involving case, P-stranding and selection does not apply here because the remnant in the short source and the remnant in the long source are selected for by the same verb, and therefore have the same case and P-stranding profile. Evidence involving binding is notoriously unclear (see
I’m grateful to a reviewer for providing these examples, which I made some modification to.
As a reviewer pointed out, the correlate (i.e., the phrase in the antecedent that corresponds to the remnant, which is
Yoshida et al. (
I am grateful to Danny Fox, David Pesetsky and the audience at MIT Ling-Lunch for helpful comments and feedback. I would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers and editor Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine for detailed and helpful reviews. I am also thankful to Rafael Abramovitz, Neil Banerjee, Christopher Baron, Yadav Gowda, Cora Lesure, Elise Newman and Frank Staniszewski for providing the English judgments, and to Tanya Bondarenko, Anton Kukhto and Mitya Privoznov for providing the Russian judgments.
The author has no competing interests to declare.