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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton September 4, 2014

Argument ellipsis: a unitary approach to pro-drop

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From the journal The Linguistic Review

Abstract

A well established assumption in the literature on null arguments is that so-called consistent pro-drop and radical (or discourse) pro-drop are distinct phenomena, characterizing different types of pro-drop languages. This paper argues that this dichotomy must be abandoned in favor of a unitary approach, and proposes to reduce both types of pro-drop to ellipsis of full-fledged argument DPs. It then shows that Fox' (2000) NP-Parallelism requirement, which accounts for the strict-sloppy ambiguities in VP-ellipsis, directly carries over to the same ambiguities in pro-drop (i.e. argument-ellipsis), and that the analysis explains a set of seemingly problematic data. The approach put forth here ultimately leads to characterizing the patterns of pro-drop observed across languages as epiphenomena.

Published Online: 2014-9-4
Published in Print: 2014-9-1

©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

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