{"id":1822,"date":"2010-10-11T05:00:12","date_gmt":"2010-10-11T09:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=1822"},"modified":"2010-10-12T07:24:10","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T11:24:10","slug":"colloquium-1015-vera-gribanova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2010\/10\/11\/colloquium-1015-vera-gribanova\/","title":{"rendered":"Linguistics Colloquium 10\/15 - Vera Gribanova (PLEASE NOTE LOCATION)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Date: Friday, October 15, 2010

\nTime: 3:30-5:00PM

\nPlace: 32-155<\/a> (PLEASE NOTE NEW ROOM)<\/strong>

\nSpeaker: Vera Gribanova (Stanford University)

\nTitle: On diagnosing ellipsis and argument drop: the view from Russian<\/P><\/p>\n

Investigations of constructions that are the result of putative ellipsis
\ncommonly face a trying analytical obstacle: the pronounced surface string can
\nbe the result of more than one logically possible derivation. These alternative
\nderivations might involve a different underlying structure, and may not involve
\ngenuine ellipsis at all (see, for example, Kizu 1997 and Merchant 1998 on
\nsluicing vs. pseudosluicing). The question of whether ellipsis is genuinely at
\nwork has famously been a problem in the analysis of structures that strand a
\nfinite verb, leaving its internal arguments and adjuncts unpronounced. One
\nanalytical possibility involves Verb-Stranding Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VVPE), in
\nwhich the inflected verb escapes an ellipsis site and is pronounced, while its
\ninternal arguments and adjuncts remain in the VP and are elided. The
\nalternative - and arguably simpler - analysis of VVPE-like structures involves
\nargument drop of the internal arguments of the verb.<\/P><\/p>\n

Two properties of the controversy about VVPE-like structures in argument drop
\nlanguages are i) that the evidence distinguishing the two alternatives is
\ndelicate and subtle (Otani and Whitman, 1991; Hoji, 1998; Kim, 1999; Doron,
\n1991; Goldberg, 2005a) , and ii) that the resulting picture sometimes involves
\nthe claim that both strategies are available for the derivation of one surface
\nstring in one language (Goldberg, 2005a,b). In this talk I examine similar
\nconstructions in Russian (1), of which both these observations hold.<\/P><\/p>\n

  1. Eto daže esli ja vody v rot naberu?

    \n that even if I water.GEN in mouth collect.1SG.FUT

    \n ‘Is that even if I fill my mouth with water?’

    <\/p>\n

    Daže esli i naberete. Da ved’ ne naberete, ne naberete
    \nže!

    \n even if and collect.2SG yes but NEG collect.2SG NEG collect.2SG EMPH

    \n ‘Even if you fill (it with water). But you won’t fill (it with water), you
    \nwon’t fill (it with water)!’ (Ju. O. Dombrovskij. Fakul’tet nenužnyx
    \nveščej, čast’ 2, 1978)
    \n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I argue that argument drop and VVPE are both available as strategies for
    \nderiving (1), and draw on evidence from a judgment questionnaire to demonstrate
    \nthat object drop is not acceptable inside islands in Russian (whereas VVPE is).
    \nDistinguishing the two possibilities in this manner has the beneficial
    \nconsequence of shedding light on a constellation of heretofore unanalyzed and
    \nunknown facts about Russian argument drop, such as:<\/P><\/p>\n

    • that Russian subject and object drop have asymmetric syntactic licensing
      \nconditions;<\/LI><\/p>\n

    • that the possibility of A-bar extraction parallels the possibility of
      \nobject drop across a series of syntactic constructions in Russian.<\/LI>\n<\/ul>\n

      The investigation concludes with a discussion of evidence from verb
      \n(mis-)matching in Russian VVPE-like constructions, arguing that this evidence
      \nis not a reliable diagnostic for genuine ellipsis in such cases.<\/P><\/p>\n

      References
      <\/p>\n

      Doron, Edit. 1991. V-movement and VP ellipsis. Unpublished ms.
      <\/p>\n

      Goldberg, Lotus. 2005a. Verb-Stranding VP Ellipsis: A Cross-Linguistic Study.
      \nPhD thesis, McGill University.
      <\/p>\n

      Goldberg, Lotus. 2005b. On the verbal identity requirement in VP ellipsis.
      \nUnpublished ms., Presented at the Identity in Ellipsis workshop at UC Berkeley.
      <\/p>\n

      Hoji, Hajime. 1998. Null objects and sloppy identity in Japanese. Linguistic
      \nInquiry 28:127—152.
      <\/p>\n

      Kim, Soowon. 1999. Sloppy\/strict identity, empty objects, and NP ellipsis.
      \nJournal of East Asian Linguistics 8:255—284.
      <\/p>\n

      Kizu, Mika. 1997. Sluicing in Wh-in-situ languages. In K. Singer, R. Eggert, and
      \nG. Anderson (Eds.), Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society 33, 231—244.
      <\/p>\n

      Merchant, Jason. 1998. ‘Pseudosluicing’: Elliptical clefts in Japanese and
      \nEnglish. In A. Alexiadou, N. Fuhrhop, P. Law, and U. Kleinhenz (Eds.), ZAS
      \nWorking Papers in Linguistics 10, 88—112. Zentrum f\u00fcr Allgemeine
      \nSprachwissenschaft.
      <\/p>\n

      Otani, Kazuyo, and John Whitman. 1991. V-raising and VP-ellipsis. Linguistic
      \nInquiry 22:345—358.
      <\/P>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Date: Friday, October 15, 2010 Time: 3:30-5:00PM Place: 32-155 (PLEASE NOTE NEW ROOM) Speaker: Vera Gribanova (Stanford University) Title: On diagnosing ellipsis and argument drop: the view from Russian Investigations of constructions that are the result of putative ellipsis commonly face a trying analytical obstacle: the pronounced surface string can be the result of more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1822"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1841,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822\/revisions\/1841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}