Abstract
In the tradition of Generative Grammar, several authors have explained the impossibility of vp-Ellipsis for Romance Languages following the hypothesis that vp-Ellipsis in these languages is not licensed by the head of infl as it is in English. It has been pointed out that in French, for instance, vp-Ellipsis is expressed by Stripping. The idea that Romance languages show tp-Ellipsis or tp-Deletion has emerged recently. In this paper I intend to demonstrate that, concerning Catalan, three related constructions, namely Stripping, negative-contrasting constructions and tp-Ellipsis are independent and clearly specified. This evidence will come from the analysis of the so-called information packaging. I'm going to argue that there are two different interpretative processes. On the one hand, Stripping and negative-contrasting constructions are under the control of focus by means of parallel foci in the former, and contrastive foci in the latter. On the other hand, tp-Ellipsis constructions are not constrained by the information packaging, although this notion might help to disambiguate the target in certain cases. Finally, we observe that the polarity particles are expressions whose function is to select the appropriate antecedent in the three cases we are concerned here.
© Walter de Gruyter
