The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 22, No. 0, pp.821-845
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2022
Received 05 Aug 2022 Revised 23 Aug 2022 Accepted 31 Aug 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.22..202208.821

English if (not)-stripping Constructions: A Direct Interpretation Approach

Seulkee Park ; Jong-Bok Kim
(1st author) Visiting Professor, Institute for the Study of Language and Information, Kyung Hee Univ., Tel: 02) 961-0211 seulkeepark@khu.ac.kr
(corresponding author) Professor, Dept. of English Language and Literature, Kyung Hee Univ., Tel: 02) 961-0892 jongbok@khu.ac.kr


© 2022 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

English if-stripping has at least two subtypes: if-stripping and negative if-stripping. As in the typical stripping, its remnant can be either a lexical or phrasal remnant, and it receives a sentential interpretation. The paper reviews sentential analyses that capture the propositional meaning of the stripped clause through movement-cum-deletion operations. The paper discusses attested corpus data that challenge the postulation of sentential sources and argues for a direct interpretation approach that directly generates if (not)-stripping and assigns the propositional meaning through discourse-based proper resolution processes.

Keywords:

if-stripping, Bare Argument Ellipsis, subordinate clauses, direct interpretation, discourse

Acknowledgments

Part of this paper is taken from Park's (2022) dissertation. Earlier versions of this paper were poster-presented at the 46th annual Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC 46) on March 19, 2022, and paper-presented at the 14th annual meeting of the Illinois Language and Linguistics Society (ILLS 14) on February 25, 2022. We thank the audiences at the conferences and anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. Any remaining errors are solely our responsibility.

References

  • Culicover, P. and R. Jackendoff. 2005. Simpler Syntax. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. [https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199271092.001.0001]
  • Depiante, M. A. 2000. The Syntax of Deep and Surface Anaphora: A Study of Null Complement Anaphora and Stripping/Bare Argument Ellipsis. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
  • Ginzburg, J. 1996. Dynamics and the semantics of dialogue. In J. Seligman and D. Westerstahl, eds., Logic, Language and Computation, 221-237. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
  • Ginzburg, J. 2012. The Interactive Stance: Meaning for Conversation. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Ginzburg, J. and I. Sag. 2000. Interrogative Investigations. Stanford, CA: CSLI publications.
  • Hankamer, J. and I. Sag. 1976. Deep and surface anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 7(3), 391-426.
  • Hardt, D. and M. Romero. 2004. Ellipsis and the structure of discourse. Journal of Semantics 21(4), 375-414. [https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/21.4.375]
  • Huddleston, R. and G. Pullum. 2005. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2005-0209]
  • Kehler, A. 2000. Coherence and the resolution of ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy 23(6), 533-575. [https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005677819813]
  • Kim, J.-B. 2015a. Fragments in Korean: A direct interpretation approach. Studies in Generative Grammar 25(3), 703-733. [https://doi.org/10.15860/sigg.25.3.201508.703]
  • Kim, J.-B. 2015b. Syntactic and semantic identity in Korean sluicing: A direct interpretation approach. Lingua 166(Part B), 260-293. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.08.005]
  • Kim, J.-B. 2017. Why-stripping in English and Korean: A direct interpretation approach. Studies in Generative Grammar 27(4), 733-751. [https://doi.org/10.15860/sigg.27.4.201711.733]
  • Kim, J.-B. 2020. Negated fragments: A direct interpretation approach. Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics 20, 427-449.
  • Kim, J.-B. and A. Abeillé. 2019. Why-stripping in English: A corpus-based perspective. Linguistic Research 36(3), 365-387. [https://doi.org/10.17250/khisli.36.3.201912.002]
  • Kim, J.-B. and P. Sells. 2013. The Korean sluicing: As a family of constructions. Studies in Generative Grammar 23(1), 103-130. [https://doi.org/10.15860/sigg.23.1.201302.103]
  • Kim, J.-B. and J. Runner. 2022. Pseudogapping in English: A direct interpretation approach. The Linguistic Review. [https://doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2022-2094]
  • Kjellmer, G. 1975. ‘The weather was fine, if not glorious’: On the ambiguity of concessive if not. English Studies 56(2), 140-146. [https://doi.org/10.1080/00138387508597682]
  • Kobele, G. and J. Merchant. 2016. The dynamics of ellipsis. Theoretical Linguistics 42(3-4), 291-296. [https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2016-0013]
  • Konietzko, A. 2016. Bare Argument Ellipsis and Focus. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. [https://doi.org/10.1075/la.233]
  • Maling, J. and A. Zaenen. 1985. Preposition-stranding and passive. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 8(2), 197-209. [https://doi.org/10.1017/S0332586500001335]
  • Merchant, J. 2001. The Syntax of Silence: Sluicing, Islands, and the Theory of Ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Merchant, J. 2004. Fragments and ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy 27(6), 661-738. [https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-005-7378-3]
  • Miller, P. and G. Pullum. 2013. Exophoric VP ellipsis. In P. Hofmeister and E. Norcliffe (eds.), The Core and the Periphery: Data-driven Perspectives on Syntax inspired by Ivan A. Sag, 5-32. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Myers, E. and M. Yoshida. 2018. What can if-stripping tell us about ellipsis? Paper presented at the 49th Annual Meeting of North East Linguistics Society (NELS 49). Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. October 5-7.
  • Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartoik. 1987. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
  • Reinhart, T. 1991. Elliptic conjunctions-non-quantificational LF. In A. Kasher, ed., The Chomskyan Turn, 360-384. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Roberts, C. 2012. Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics and Pragmatics 5(6), 1-69. [https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.6]
  • Sag, I. and J. Nykiel. 2011. Remarks on sluicing. In S. Müller, ed., Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG 2011), 188-208. University of Washington, Seattle. August 22-25. [https://doi.org/10.21248/hpsg.2011.11]
  • Stjepanović, S. 2008. P-stranding under sluicing in a non-P-stranding language? Linguistic Inquiry 39(1), 179-190. [https://doi.org/10.1162/ling.2008.39.1.179]
  • Stockwell, R. 2018. Ellipsis in tautologous conditionals: The contrast condition on ellipsis. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 28, 584-603. [https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v28i0.4426]
  • Wurmbrand, S. 2017. Stripping and topless complements. Linguistic Inquiry 48(2), 341-366. [https://doi.org/10.1162/LING_a_00245]
  • Yoshida, M., C. Nakao and I. Ortega-Santos. 2015. The syntax of why-stripping. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 33(1), 323-370. [https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-014-9253-9]