Determiner sharing as an instance of dependent ellipsis

Abstract In English coordinate ellipsis constructions, the determinerof a DP in the second conjunct can sometimes be omitted under identity with the determiner of the corresponding constituent of the first conjunct, a phenomenon known as 'determiner sharing'. Following Williams's (1997) analysis of nonconstituent ellipsis, we argue that determiner sharing involves a two-step elision process: coordinate ellipsis plus a process we term 'dependent ellipsis'. Dependent ellipsis is the process by which a coordinate null head licenses the heads of its direct dependents to be null as well. We show th... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Ackema, Peter
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Reihe/Periodikum: The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics
Sprache: Englisch
Anmerkungen: © Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002
ISSN: 1383-4924
Weitere Identifikatoren: doi: 10.1023/A:1021256116080
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/olc-benelux-2042971480
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Datenquelle: Online Contents Benelux; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021256116080
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021256116080

Abstract In English coordinate ellipsis constructions, the determinerof a DP in the second conjunct can sometimes be omitted under identity with the determiner of the corresponding constituent of the first conjunct, a phenomenon known as 'determiner sharing'. Following Williams's (1997) analysis of nonconstituent ellipsis, we argue that determiner sharing involves a two-step elision process: coordinate ellipsis plus a process we term 'dependent ellipsis'. Dependent ellipsis is the process by which a coordinate null head licenses the heads of its direct dependents to be null as well. We show that, under the hypothesis that dependent ellipsis is not a transitive relation, the properties of determiner sharing constructions follow, adding some new observations to those noted before in the literature. For example, we explain that subject determiner sharing is usually only possible if Tense is gapped in the second conjunct while object determiner sharing is dependent on Verb-gapping. However, we also show that in certain cases subject D-sharing may be possible without T-gapping, and, vice versa, there are cases where T-gapping does not license subject D-sharing.