Smircle Tuesday, Discussing Toosarvandani
Natalia writes:
Next Tuesday (2/26) we’ll be meeting at 2pm to discuss Toosarvandani’s Gapping is VP ellipsis: A reply to Johnson, abstract below. Come for syntax and dessert!
Johnson (2009) argues that the gapping — e.g. Some had ordered mussels, and others swordfish— does not arise through VP-ellipsis because gapping has properties that VP-ellipsis does not. He proposes instead that the gap in gapping arises through ‘low coordination’ and across-the-board movement. I first show that Johnson’s across-the-board movement account fails to generate gapping in coordination structures with corrective but (Vicente 2010, Toosarvandani, to appear-b). I then revive a version of the ellipsis account in which VP-ellipsis applies to low-coordination structures. This correctly generates gapping in corrective but sentences. Once the information-structural properties of low coordinations are taken into consideration— low coordinates must have parallel focus structures— it also derives the unique properties of gapping.