dr Adam Szczegielniak, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Harvard University

Syntactic Priming in Ellipsis

This talk will discuss research that explores the interaction between syntactic and semantic structure in ellipsis within the general framework of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995). Evidence for the existence of syntactic structure in elided fragments will be discussed (Rooth 1992, Merchant 2001, Shapiro 2003, Frazier & Clifton 2005). For example, (1) is grammatical because the overt phonetic realization of the elided fragment (indicated by strikeout) is also grammatical and syntactically/semantically parallel with the ellipsis antecedent (blue font), whereas (2) is ungrammatical because there does not seem to be a possible overt phonetic continuation that is grammatical and syntactically/semantically parallel.

1. Jan zatańczył z kimś, ale nie wiem z kim Jan zatańczył
*2. Jan zatańczył z kimś, ale nie wiem kim Jan zatańczył z

Although the data in (3) might suggest that ellipsis is a discourse process (Hardt 2004, 2008), the contrast in (1,2) suggests that grammar has a role in licensing ellipsis. Following the research in Rodrigues (2007), Szczegielniak (2008), Craenenbroeck (2009), Nykiel (2009), this talk will explore the mechanism underlying the imposition of structure on unpronounced fragments. It will be argued that a similar mechanism to syntactic priming (Bock 1986) is responsible for determining the syntax of elided fragments. For example, Lombardi and Potter (1998) report that in a recall task where subjects are asked to recall a sentence (the target) that has been previously read (the prime), after reading a word (the lure), the lure word influences the grammatical structure of the prime. Thus, when the construction in (4) was the prime and donate was the lure word, subjects would recall (4) as (5).

Prime: 4. The rich widow is going to give the university a million dollars.
Lure word: donate
Target: 5. The rich widow is going to donate a million dollars to the university.

In the task, subjects did not only substitute the verb give with the verb donate but also modified the syntactic structure in order to make the sentence acceptable. In other words, ''when more than one structure is compatible with the conceptual representation and with the chosen verb, a structure that has been recently activated is likely to be reused" (Lombardi and Potter 1992). The talk will argue that a similar mechanism can be responsible for licensing ellipsis, where:
- antecedent = prime
- target = elided string
- lure word(s) the non elided part (wh word, do-so, subject, etc.)

Bock, J. K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18(3), 355-387.

Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. MIT Press.

Van Craenenbroeck (2009). Invisible last resort. A note on clefts as the underlying source for sluicing. Lingua.

Hardt, D. & Romero, M. (2004). Ellipsis and the structure of discourse. Journal of Semantics, 21(4), 375.

Hardt, D. (2008). VP ellipsis and constraints on interpretation. In Johnson (Ed.), Topics in Ellipsis. Cambridge Univ Press.

Lombardi, L., & Potter, M. C. (1992). The regeneration speech in short term memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 713 - 733.

Merchant, J. (2001). The syntax of silence: Sluicing, islands, and the theory of ellipsis. Oxford University Press.

Nykiel, J., Sag I. (2009). Sluicing and stranding. 83rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, January 8-11. San Francisco, CA, USA

Rodrigues,Vicente, Nevins (2007) Cleaving the interactions between sluicing and preposition stranding, MS Harvard, UNICAMP, Leiden.

Rooth, M. (1992). Ellipsis redundancy and reduction redundancy. In Proceedings of the Stuttgart ellipsis workshop.

Ross, Haj (1967). Constraints on variables in syntax. MIT Dissertation

Shapiro, L. P., Hestvik, A., Lesan, L., & Rachel Garcia, A. (2003). Charting the time-course of vp-ellipsis sentence comprehension: Evidence for an initial and independent structural analysis. Journal of Memory and Language, 49(1), 1-19.

Szczegielniak, Adam (2008). Islands in sluicing in Polish. In Natasha Abner and Jason Bishop (eds.), Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Cascadilla Proceedings Project, pp. 404-412. Somerville, MA, USA.