A cross-linguistic look at VP-ellipsis and verbal speech errors.
Ellen E. Thompson · 2005
This paper argues that consideration of spontaneous speech errors provides insight into cross-linguistic analyses of syntactic phenomena. In particular, I claim that differences in the distribution of non-parallel VP-Ellipsis constructions in English and German, as well as variation in the spontaneously-occurring verbal speech errors, is explained by a parametric analysis of variation in the inflectional systems of the two languages. 1. A Hybrid Theory of Inflection Lasnik (1995) argues for a parametric analysis of verbal inflection according to which a language may exhibit (i) a unitary system, where main and auxiliary verbs come either pre-inflected in the lexicon, or are derivationally constructed out of syntactically separate stem and affix, or (ii) a hybrid system, where main and auxiliary verbs are derived differently. 2. VP Ellipsis 2.1. VP Ellipsis in English Evidence for this parametric analysis comes from VP-Ellipsis constructions. English permits parallel VP-Ellipsis, as in (1a), as well as non-parallel Ellipsis, as in (1b). It is not clear how ellipsis is resolved in (1b), since resolution requires identical forms. Assuming that English main verbs are constructed out of syntactically separate stem and affix, (1b) is possible because there is a point in the derivation of the clause where the stem and inflection are separate units, and therefore sleep is available as the ellipsis antecedent, as shown in (1c). (1) a. Mary won a prize, and John did too. b. John slept, and Mary will too. c. John [past] sleep, and Mary Mary will sleep too Warner (1986) notes that non-parallel VP ellipsis is not licensed with auxiliary verbs, as shown by (2a). This is due to the fact that there is no point in the derivation of an auxiliary verb where the verb is separate from inflection; there is no form have which can resolve the ellipsis site. (2) a. *John has left, but Mary shouldn't Impossible reading: ‘John has left, but Mary shouldn’t have left’ b. *John [ has] left, but Mary shouldn't has left