The Syntactic Integration of Appositive Relative Clauses: Evidence from Clausal Ellipsis

1. The Syntactic Integration of Appositive Relative Clauses: Evidence from Clausal Ellipsis TABU Dag 19 June 2012, Groningen James Griffiths CLCG, Groningen j.e.griffiths@rug joint research with Mark de Vries

2. Overview • Integration vs. orphanage approaches to appositive relative clauses (ARCs) • The PF-deletion approach to clausal ellipsis • The distribution of ARCs in clausal ellipsis environments provides evidence for the integration approach

3. ARCs, orphanage, & integration • ARCs:(1) John, who is my neighbour, is a good guy. anchor ARC

4. ARCs, orphanage, & integration • Orphanage approaches: • ARCs are syntactically unrelated to their anchor • (Haegeman 2009):ARCs are interpreted as related to their anchor when ‘contextualized’ post-LF: (2) Pre spell-out: [CP John is a good guy] [CPwho is my neighbour]

5. ARCs, orphanage, & integration • Espinal (1991): ARCs lie on different plane of three-dimensional space to their host, but intersect it at the terminal string: S NP VP • John who is my neighbour is a good guy S

6. ARCs, orphanage, & integration • Integration approaches: • ARCs and their anchors do share a syntactic relationship, albeit a special kind of relationship. • De Vries (2009, to appear): an ARC is parenthetically coordinated to its anchor, mediated by the functional head Par0.

7. ARCs, orphanage, & integration (4) TPHost VP ParP V DP DP Par’ kissed Mary John Par0 ARC who is my neighbour

8. ARCs, orphanage, & integration • Two advantages of De Vries’ integration approach: • Par provides a natural position for several things: • Pott’s(2005) semantic ‘comma feature’ • parenthetical coordinators (5) New York, or the Big Apple, is a popular tourist destination in the winter. (6) I met a nice girl – and I think you know her – at the party last night. (Heringa2011:144-145)

9. ARCs, orphanage, & integration (ii) Parentheticals can be layered recursively; a hallmark of syntax: (7) I still owe Anna – and Anna, who hit John, an unpleasant guy, who, as you know, disappeared last night – 250 dollars.(modified from De Vries, to appear)

10. Clausal ellipsis: fragment answers • Fragment answers are derived by remnant-fronting and PF-deletion. (Merchant 2004, Griffiths & Lipták, to appear) • Elided material must be given, i.e. recoverable from the surrounding discourse. (Tancredi 1992, Schwarzschild 1999, Merchant 2001) (8) A: John kissed someone. B: Yeah, [CPLucy [TPJohn kissed t1]]1 1Precisely which categorical projections in the clausal domain are involved in PF-deletion, and exactly what undergoes elision (C0 or TP) is tangential to my purposes here.

11. ARCs & clausal ellipsis: the data • ARCs may be anchored to a nominal or a clause:2 (9) Nominal anchor John stole Mary’s computer, which crashes all the time. (10) Clausal anchor John stole Mary’s computer, which is a heinous crime. 2See Arnold & Borsley (2008) for a discussion of similar facts from a HPSG perspective

12. ARCs & clausal ellipsis: the data • Clausal-related ARCs are acceptable in fragment answers: (11) A: What did John steal? B: Mary’s computer, which is a heinous crime. (12) A: Who stole Mary’s computer? B: John, which is heinous crime.

13. ARCs & clausal ellipsis: the data • Nominal-related ARCs are acceptable in fragment answers only ifthe remnant is the nominal to which the ARC relates: (13) A: What did John steal? B: Mary’s computer, which crashes all the time. (14) A: Who stole Mary’s computer? B: * John, which crashes all the time. (intended: John stole Mary’s computer, which crashes all the time.)

14. ARCs & clausal ellipsis: the data • ARCs that are ambiguous between being clausal- or nominal-related are unambiguously interpreted as clausal-related if the nominal in question is not the remnant: (15) John stole Mary’s computer, which is awful. (16) A: Who stole Mary’s computer? B: John, which is awful.

15. ARCs, ellipsis & integration • Assuming the PF-deletion approach to clausal ellipsis, De Vries’ integration approach to ARCs provides a natural explanation for these data. • We should do well to remember that: (i) ellipsis targets constituents (Ross 1969) (ii) no difference in interpretation pertains between an ellipsis site and its non-elided equivalent (modulo vehicle change (Fiengo & May 1994))

16. ARCs, ellipsis & integration (17) A: What did John steal? B: Mary’s computer, which is a heinous crime. ParP CP Par’ DP1 C’ Par0 ARC Mary’s computer C0 TP which is a heinous crime John stole t1

17. ARCs, ellipsis & integration (18) A: Who stole Mary’s computer? B: John, which is a heinous crime. ParP CP Par’ DP1 C’ Par0 ARC John C0 TP which is a heinous crime t1 stole Mary’s computer

18. ARCs, ellipsis & integration (19) A: What did John steal? B: Mary’s computer, which crashes all the time. CP ParP1 C’ DP Par’ C0 TP Mary’s computer Par0 ARC John stole t1 which crashes all the time

19. ARCs, ellipsis & integration (20) A: Who stole Mary’s computer?B: * John, which crashes all the time. CP DP1 C John C0 TP t1 VP V0 ParP stole DP Par’ Mary’s computer Par0 ARC which crashes all the time CRASH! PF-deletion targets non-constituent

20. ARCs, ellipsis & integration (21) A: Who stole Mary’s computer? B: John, which is awful. ParP CP Par’ DP1 C’ Par0 ARC John C0 TP which is awful t1 stole Mary’s computer

21. ARCs, ellipsis & integration (22) A: Who stole Mary’s computer?B: #John, which is awful. CP DP1 C John C0 TP t1 VP V0 ParP stole DP Par’ Mary’s computer Par0 ARC which is awful CRASH! PF-deletion targets non-constituent

22. Conclusion • Why is this evidence for the integration approach? • PF-deletion fails (due to non-constituent deletion) only if the ARC and nominal anchor are analysed as sharing the same maximal projection in the narrow syntax. • Under the orphanage approach, the ARC and nominal anchor are analysed as syntactically-unrelated maximal projections, and consequentially PF-deletion should never fail. This makes the wrong predictions w.r.t. (20) and (22).

23. Conclusion • because elided material is always recoverable from the surrounding discourse, advocates of the orphanage account cannot appeal to ‘uninterpretability’ to rule out (20) and (22), as these constructions should – in theory– receive the same interpretation as their non-elliptical counterparts.

24. Thanks for your attention! References Arnold, D. & R. Borsley. 2008. Non-restrictive relative clauses, ellipsis and anaphora. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG08), S. Müller, ed., 5-25. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Espinal, M.T. 1991. The representation of disjunct constituents. Language 67, 726-762. Fiengo, R., & May, R. 1994. Indices and Identity.MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Griffiths, J. & A. Lipták. To appear. Contrast and island sensitivity in clausal ellipsis. Syntax. Haegeman, L. 2009. Parenthetical Adverbs: The radical orphanage approach. In Dislocated Elements in Discourse,B. Shaer, P. Cook, W. Frey & C. Maienborn, eds., 331-347. New York: Routledge. (reprint of Haegeman 1991) Heringa, H. 2011. Appositional constructions. PhD thesis, University of Groningen. LOT Dissertation Series 294. Merchant, J. 2004. Fragments and ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy 27, 661-738. Merchant, J. 2001. The syntax of silence. Oxford University Press. Ross, John 1969. Guess who? In Papers from the 5th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, R. Binnick, A. Davison, G. Green & J. Morgan, eds., 252-286. Chicago Linguistics Society. Schwarzschild, R. 1999. Givenness, AvoidF and other constraints on the placement of accent. Natural Language Semantics 7, 141- 177. Tancredi, C. 1992. Deletion, deaccenting, and presupposition. PhD thesis, MIT. Vries, M. de. 2009. Specifying Coordination: An Investigation into the Syntax of Dislocation Extraposition and Parenthesis. In Language and Linguistics: Emerging Trends, C. R. Dreyer, ed. 37-98. New York: Nova. Vries, M. de. To appear. Unconventional Mergers. In Ways of Structure Building, M. Uribe-Etxebarria & V. Valmala, eds., 143-166. Oxford University Press.