Rethinking Right-node Raising

Dennis Ott

doi:10.1515/tlr-2025-2013

Article

Rethinking Right-node Raising

Dennis Ott

Published/Copyright: September 18, 2025

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal The Linguistic Review Volume 42 Issue 3

Abstract

Despite decades of research on Right-node Raising (RNR), the phenomenon has remained elusive, seemingly defying the laws of syntax as we know it. This paper argues that this is so because RNR is not a bona fide syntactic phenomenon at all, but rather a paratactic configuration composed in discourse. RNR configurations consist of an unbounded sequence of potentially incomplete expressions whose prosodic realization provokes the expectation of a continuation, which is furnished by a sequence-final expression which, depending on the type of RNR, is either sentential or fragmentary. It is shown that this analysis can reconcile seemingly contradictory properties of RNR constructions, crucially by abandoning the long-standing assumption that RNR configurations are constructed in sentential syntax.

Keywords: Right-node Raising; syntax; parataxis; discourse

Corresponding author: Dennis Ott, Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, E-mail: dennis.ott@post.harvard.edu

Parts of the material in this paper were meant to be presented at CGG 32 at the University of the Basque Country in Vitoria-Gasteiz; however, due to the author’s impeccable timing, they were actually presented only a year later, at CGG 33 at the University of Alcalá. I thank audiences at both events as well as at the University of the Basque Country, Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Geneva, and Carleton University for listening and commenting. I thank Gorka Elordieta, James Griffiths, Dan Siddiqi, Dominique Sportiche, Vidal Valmala, Laura Vela Plo, and two anonymous TLR reviewers for helpful feedback that led to substantial improvements of the paper. I’m furthermore indebted to Noam Chomsky for encouragement early on in the genesis of the ideas presented here. Lastly, I should thank the editors of this issue, Laura Vela Plo and Arantzazu Elordieta, for their unreasonable patience.

References

Abbott, Barbara. 1976. Right-node Raising as a test for constituenthood. Linguistic Inquiry 7(4). 639–642.Search in Google Scholar

An, Duk-Ho. 2007. New arguments for Right-node Raising as PF-deletion. In Erin Bainbridge & Brian Agbayani (eds.), Proceedings of WECOL, vol. 2006, 9–21. Fresno: California State University.Search in Google Scholar

Asarina, Anna. 2011. Case in Uyghur and beyond. Cambridge, MA: MIT Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Asher, Nicholas & Alex Lascarides. 1998. Bridging. Journal of Semantics 15(1). 83–113. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/15.1.83.Search in Google Scholar

Bachrach, Asaf & Roni Katzir. 2009. Right-node raising and delayed spell-out. In Kleanthes K. Grohmann (ed.), InterPhases: Phase-theoretic investigations of linguistic interfaces, 282–305. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780199541126.003.0011Search in Google Scholar

Barros, Matthew & Luis Vicente. 2011. Right-node Raising requires both ellipsis and multidomination. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 17(1). 1–10.Search in Google Scholar

Belk, Zoe, Ad Neeleman & Joy Philip. 2023. What divides, and what unites, Right-node Raising. Linguistic Inquiry 54(4). 685–728. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00454.Search in Google Scholar

Bolinger, David L. 1989. Intonation and its uses. Stanford: Stanford University Press.10.1515/9781503623125Search in Google Scholar

Boskovic, Željko & Howard Lasnik. 2003. On the distribution of null complementizers. Linguistic Inquiry 34(4). 527–546. https://doi.org/10.1162/002438903322520142.Search in Google Scholar

Burdin, Rachel S. & Joseph Tyler. 2018. Rises inform, and plateaus remind: Exploring the epistemic meanings of “list intonation” in American English. Journal of Pragmatics 136. 68–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.08.006.Search in Google Scholar

Cann, Ronnie, Ruth Kempson & Lutz Marten. 2005. The dynamics of language. Oxford: Elsevier.Search in Google Scholar

Chaves, Rui P. 2014. On the disunity of Right-node Raising phenomena. Language 90(3). 492–538. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2014.0041.Search in Google Scholar

Chaves, Rui P. & Michael T. Putnam. 2020. Unbounded-dependency constructions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198784999.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783112316009Search in Google Scholar

Chomsky, Noam. 1961. On the notion ‘rule of grammar’. In Proceedings of the 12th Symposium on Applied Mathematics, 132–145. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society.Search in Google Scholar

Chomsky, Noam. 2018. Syntactic structures: Some retrospective comments. In Norbert Hornstein, Howard Lasnik, Pritty Patel-Grosz & Charles Yang (eds.), Syntactic structures after 60 years, 1–14. Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9781501506925-135Search in Google Scholar

Chomsky, Noam. 2021. Minimalism: Where are we now, and where can we hope to go? Gengo Kenkyu 160. 5–41.Search in Google Scholar

Chomsky, Noam, Ángel J. Gallego & Dennis Ott. 2019. Generative grammar and the faculty of language: Insights, questions, and challenges. Catalan Journal of Linguistics. 229–261. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.288.Search in Google Scholar

Citko, Barbara. 2017. Right-node Raising. In Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to syntax, 2nd edn., 1–31. Hoboken:NJ: John Wiley & Sons.10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom020Search in Google Scholar

Dalrymple, Mary & Andrew Kehler. 1995. On the constraints imposed by respectively. Linguistic Inquiry 26(3). 547–563.Search in Google Scholar

de Vos, Mark & Luis Vicente. 2005. Coordination under Right-node Raising. In John Alderete, Chung-hye Han & Alexei Kochetov (eds.), Proceedings of WCCFL 24, 97–104. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Search in Google Scholar

de Vries, Mark. 2017. Across-the-board phenomena. In Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell companion to syntax, 1–31. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom094Search in Google Scholar

Dehé, Nicole. 2014. Parentheticals in spoken English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139032391Search in Google Scholar

Féry, Caroline. 1993. German intonational patterns. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.10.1515/9783111677606Search in Google Scholar

Féry, Caroline & Katharina Hartmann. 2005. The focus and prosodic structure of German Right-node Raising and Gapping. The Linguistic Review 22(1). 67–114. https://doi.org/10.1515/tlir.2005.22.1.69.Search in Google Scholar

Gawron, Jean Mark & Andrew Kehler. 2004. The semantics of respective readings, conjunction, and filler–gap dependencies. Linguistics & Philosophy 27(2). 169–207. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:ling.0000016452.63443.3d.10.1023/B:LING.0000016452.63443.3dSearch in Google Scholar

Griffiths, James. 2019. A Q-based approach to clausal ellipsis: Deriving the preposition-stranding and island-sensitivity generalizations without movement. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 4(1). 42. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.812.Search in Google Scholar

Güneş, Güliz. 2015. Deriving prosodic structures. LOT Dissertation Series 387. Utrecht: LOT.Search in Google Scholar

Ha, Seungwan. 2008. Ellipsis, Right-node Raising, and across-the-board constructions. Boston: PhD dissertation, Boston University.Search in Google Scholar

Hartmann, Katharina. 2000. Right-node Raising and gapping. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/z.106Search in Google Scholar

Hirschberg, Julia. 2006. Pragmatics and intonation. In Laurence R. Horn & Gregory Ward (eds.), The handbook of pragmatics, 515–537. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.10.1002/9780470756959.ch23Search in Google Scholar

Husband, E. Matthew. 2015. Self-repairs as Right-node Raising constructions. Lingua 160. 24–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.03.007.Search in Google Scholar

Jackendoff, Ray. 1977. X-bar syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Jackendoff, Ray. Forthcoming. Parenthetical constructions in the parallel architecture. Ms., Tufts/MIT.Search in Google Scholar

Kentner, Gerrit, Caroline Féry & Kai Alter. 2008. Prosody in speech production and perception. In Anita Steube (ed.), The discourse potential of underspecified structures, 207–226. Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110209303.3.207Search in Google Scholar

Ladd, D. Robert. 1980. The structure of intonational meaning. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Larson, Bob. 2012. A dilemma with accounts of Right-node Raising. Linguistic Inquiry 43(4). 631–643. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00078.Search in Google Scholar

Larson, Bob. 2013. The syntax of non-syntactic dependencies. Maryland: University of Maryland dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Larson, Bob. 2015. The inherent syntactic incompleteness of Right-node Raising. In Marlies Kluck, Denis Bouchard & Katharina Hartmann (eds.), Parenthesis and ellipsis: Cross-linguistic and theoretical perspectives, 167–198. Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9781614514831.247Search in Google Scholar

Larson, Bob. 2018. Right-node raising and nongrammaticality. Studia Linguistica 72(1–2). 213–237. https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12060.Search in Google Scholar

Levine, Robert D. & Thomas E. Hukari. 2006. The unity of unbounded-dependency constructions. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar

Liberman, Mark. 2007. FLoP in the funny papers. Blog entry at Language Log. Available at: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/∼myl/languagelog/archives/005155.Search in Google Scholar

Martinez de la Hidalga, Gillen. 2016. Right-node Raising in Basque. MA thesis, University of the Basque Country.Search in Google Scholar

McCawley, James D. 1982. Parentheticals and discontinuous constituent structure. Linguistic Inquiry 13. 91–106.Search in Google Scholar

McCloskey, James D. 1986. Right-node Raising and preposition stranding. Linguistic Inquiry 17(1). 183–186.Search in Google Scholar

Merchant, Jason. 2004. Fragments and ellipsis. Linguistics & Philosophy 27(6). 661–738. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-005-7378-3.Search in Google Scholar

Miller, George A. & Noam Chomsky. 1963. Finitary models of language users. In R. D. Luce, Robert R. Bush & Eugene Galanter (eds.), Handbook of mathematical psychology, vol. 2, 419–491. New York: Wiley.Search in Google Scholar

Nespor, Marina & Irene Vogel. 1986. Prosodic phonology. Berlin: De Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar

Onea, Edgar. 2016. Potential questions in discourse. Leiden: Brill.10.1163/9789004217935_009Search in Google Scholar

Onea, Edgar & Dennis Ott. 2022. Nominal appositives in grammar and discourse. Language 98(1). 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2022.0000.Search in Google Scholar

Ott, Dennis. 2022. Unbounded sequences as paratactic configurations. In Proceedings of NELS, vol. 52, 311–324. Amherst, MA: GLSA.Search in Google Scholar

Ott, Dennis & Mark de Vries. 2016. Right-dislocation as deletion. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 34. 641–690. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-015-9307-7.Search in Google Scholar

Ott, Dennis. In press. Phrase structure and its limits. In Kleanthes K. Grohmann & Evelina Leivada (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of Minimalism. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Peterson, Peter. 1999. On the boundaries of syntax: Non-syntagmatic relations. In Peter Collins & David Lee (eds.), The clause in English, 229–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.45.16petSearch in Google Scholar

Phillips, Collin. 1996. Order and structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Postal, Paul M. 1974. On raising. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Postal, Paul M. 1994. Parasitic and pseudoparasitic gaps. Linguistic Inquiry 25. 63–117.Search in Google Scholar

Roberts, Craige. 1996. Information structure: toward an integrated theory of formal pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon & Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 49: Papers in semantics. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar

Ross, John R. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Sabbagh, Joseph. 2007. Ordering and linearizing rightward movement. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 25. 349–401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-006-9011-8.Search in Google Scholar

Sabbagh, Joseph. 2008. Right-node Raising and extraction in Tagalog. Linguistic Inquiry 39(3). 502–511. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling.2008.39.3.502.Search in Google Scholar

Sabbagh, Joseph. 2014. Right-node Raising. Language & Linguistics Compass 8(1). 24–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12058.Search in Google Scholar

Schein, Barry. 2017. ‘And’: Conjunction reduction redux. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/10488.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2002. Speech Prosody 2002: Contrastive FOCUS vs. presentational focus: Prosodic evidence from Right-node Raising in English. In Bernard Bel & Isabelle Marlien (eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody, 2002, 643–646. Aix-en-Provence: Laboratoire Parole et Langage.10.21437/SpeechProsody.2002-146Search in Google Scholar

Steedman, Mark. 2007. On “the computation”. In Gillian Ramchand & Charles Reiss (eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic interfaces, 575–612. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Swingle, K. 1993. The role of prosody in Right-node Raising. In Geoffrey K. Pullum & Eric Potsdam (eds.), Syntax at Santa Cruz, vol. 2, 83–112. Santa Cruz: The Linguistics Research Center, University of California.Search in Google Scholar

Valmala, Vidal. 2012. Two types of Right-node Raising. Unpublished manuscript, UPV/EHU.Search in Google Scholar

Valmala, Vidal. 2013. On rRight-node Raising in Catalan and Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 12. 219–251. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.64.Search in Google Scholar

Wang, Yuyun. 2024. Right-node Raising in Mandarin Chinese: Are we moving right? Linguistics 62(2). 261–294. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2020-0163.Search in Google Scholar

Westera, Matthijs. 2017. Exhaustivity and intonation: A unified theory. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Wexler, Kenneth & Peter W. Culicover. 1980. Formal principles of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Whitman, Neal. 2009. Right-node wrapping. In Erhard Hinrichs & John Nerbonne (eds.), Theory and evidence in semantics, 235–256. Stanford University, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar

Wilder, Chris. 1999. Right-node Raising and the LCA. In Sonia Bird, Andrew Carnie, Jason D. Haugen & Peter Norquest (eds.), Proceedings of the 18th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 586–598. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Search in Google Scholar

Wilder, Chris. 2018. Conjunction reduction and Right-node Raising. In Jeroen van Craenenbroeck & Tanya Temmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of ellipsis, 681–718. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198712398.013.29Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2025-09-18

Published in Print: 2025-10-27

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2025-2013

Keywords for this article

Right-node Raising; syntax; parataxis; discourse