Sloppy symmetry under ellipsis
-
Jeroen van Craenenbroeck
and
Kyle Johnson
Abstract
This paper focuses on the behavior of symmetric predicates under ellipsis. Building on Stockwell (Stockwell, Richard. 2020. Contrast and verb phrase ellipsis: Triviality, symmetry, and competition. UCLA. Doctoral Dissertation), we examine the phenomenon of participant and transitivity switching under VP-ellipsis, which symmetric predicates permit but non-symmetric ones do not. While Stockwell takes this as evidence for a semantic identity condition on ellipsis, we show that semantic equivalence is too weak. Specifically, cases of participant or transitivity switching involving focus marking are wrongly predicted to be acceptable. We argue instead for a syntactic identity condition on ellipsis and sketch a new analysis of symmetric predicates as unaccusatives.
Acknowledgements
Our thanks to the organizers and participants of the 32nd Colloquium on Generative Grammar. We are especially indebted to Jason Merchant, Gary Thoms, Guido Vanden Wyngaerd, Tanja Temmerman, Cora-Cavirani-Pots, Edoardo Cavirani, Engela De Villiers, Anastasiia Vyshnevska, Jianrong Yu, and Milan Řezáč for steering us clear of initial stumbles.
References
Bassi, Itai. 2021. Fake features and valuation from context. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Doctoral Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Fiengo, Robert & Robert May. 1994. Indices and identity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Fox, Danny. 2002. Antecedent-contained deletion and the copy theory of movement. Linguistic Inquiry 33. 63–96. https://doi.org/10.1162/002438902317382189.Search in Google Scholar
Fox, Danny. 2003. On logical form. In Randall Hendrick (ed.), Minimalist syntax, 82–123. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.10.1002/9780470758342.ch2Search in Google Scholar
Grosu, Alexander. 1973. On the nonunitary nature of the coordinate structure constraint. Linguistic Inquiry 4. 88–92.Search in Google Scholar
Hardt, Dan. 1993. Verb phrase ellipsis: Form, meaning and processing. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. Doctoral Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence. 1980. Affixation and the unaccusative hpothesis. In Jody Kreiman & Almerindo E. Ojeda (eds.), Papers from the sixteenth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, vol. 16, 134–146. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Search in Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Stanley Peters. 1969. Phrasal conjunction and symmetric predicates. In David A. Reibel & Sanford A. Schane (eds.), Modern studies in English: Readings in transformational grammar, 113–142. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Search in Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 2007. Restitutive re- and the first phase syntax/semantics of the VP. New York, NY: Handout of a talk given at the University of Maryland.Search in Google Scholar
Merchant, Jason. 2001. The syntax of silence: Sluicing, islands, and the theory of ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780199243730.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Merchant, Jason. 2013. Voice and ellipsis. Linguistic Inquiry 44. 77–108. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00120.Search in Google Scholar
Rooth, Maths. 1992. A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 1. 76–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02342617.Search in Google Scholar
Siloni, Tal. 2012. Reciprocal verbs and symmetry. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 30. 261–320. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-011-9144-2.Search in Google Scholar
Stockwell, Richard. 2019. Participant switching verb phrase ellipsis. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA. Master’s thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Stockwell, Richard. 2020. Contrast and verb phrase ellipsis: Triviality, symmetry, and competition. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA. Doctoral Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Winter, Yoad. 2016. The reciprocity-symmetry generalization: Protopredicates and the organization of lexical meanings. In Christopher Piñon (ed.), Empirical issues in syntax and semantics, vol. 11, 245–274. Paris: CSSP.Search in Google Scholar
Winter, Yoad. 2018. Symmetric predicates and the semantics of reciprocal alternations. Semantics and Pragmatics 11. 1–47. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.11.1.Search in Google Scholar
© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- AGREEment and ellipsis
- Coerced inflected infinitives in Portuguese
- Agreement without agree: scattered, not distributed, agreement across modules
- Two routes to predicate ellipsis in Spanish: the clitic versus focus strategy
- Rethinking Right-node Raising
- No ellipsis-contained antecedents: adjunct-licensed ellipsis in Spanish
- Sloppy symmetry under ellipsis
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- AGREEment and ellipsis
- Coerced inflected infinitives in Portuguese
- Agreement without agree: scattered, not distributed, agreement across modules
- Two routes to predicate ellipsis in Spanish: the clitic versus focus strategy
- Rethinking Right-node Raising
- No ellipsis-contained antecedents: adjunct-licensed ellipsis in Spanish
- Sloppy symmetry under ellipsis
