SPEAKER: Ivan Sag — Stanford University
TIME: 3:30 PM, Friday 10/07
LOCATION: 32-141
TITLE: Sluicing without Ellipsis
Abstract:
This talk examines various arguments that have been made by Merchant
(2001, 2004, 2008, to appear) against the direct-interpretation theory
of Sluicing and Bare Argument Ellipsis put forth by Ginzburg and Sag
(2000) [GSOO] (see also Culicover and Jackendoff, 2005). With more
careful examination of GS00’s proposal, however, specifically in
relation to the role of salient utterance (SAL-UTT) and the maximal
question under discussion (MAX-QUD) supplied by context, the arguments
made against the direct-interpretation approach are seen to lose their
force. We also examine data from a number of languages which are
problematic for any deletion-based analysis of Sluicing, showing how
the direct-interpretation approach avoids these difficulties.
Finally, we show how GS00’s analysis interacts with Ginzburg’s (in
press) theory of dialogue to provide an account of `sprouting’ that
answers the arguments against GS00 offered in Chung, Ladusaw, and
McCloskey, to appear.