2021/06/17 by Gesoel Mendes, Jason Kandybowicz
Arts and Humanities · #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
paper · doi:10.1162/ling_a_00434
openalex publication_date 2021/06/17 · crossref created 2021/06/17 · crossref issued 2023/01/01 · crossref published 2023/01/01 · crossref published-online 2023/03/21 · crossref published-print 2023/03/21 · crossref deposited 2023/11/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29
This article presents novel data from ellipsis in Nupe, a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria, and explores its theoretical implications. Three claims are made. First, sluicing in Nupe counterexemplifies Merchant’s (2001) Sluicing-COMP Generalization. Second, ungrammatical outputs resulting from extraction from perfect clauses are salvaged by ellipsis, arguing against Kandybowicz’s (2009) analysis where such a restriction is a narrow-syntax derivational constraint. Third, COMP-trace effects in Nupe are also repaired under ellipsis, lending support to Kandybowicz’s (2009) claim that the Nupe COMP-trace effect is an interface phenomenon. Our findings provide evidence for the claim that ellipsis can repair certain otherwise ill-formed structures.