Theories of argument ellipsis based on PF deletion or LF copying do not generate predictions regarding possible constraints on the semantic type of the elided argument. Yet such constraints obtain, as documented in Landau 2022: only type-e arguments ca…
This article argues that under the assumption that the verbal domain contains VoiceP, distinct from vP, Korean has VP-ellipsis, where the morpheme ha, which lacks semantic content, is located in v in the surface representation and its complement VP—con…
Nguni bare or augmentless ([−A]) nominals are licit only as strict negative dependents and wh-words. They may not appear in a preverbal subject position unless local to a negation-licensed [−A] complementizer of a subjunctive clause (Pietraszko 2021). …
This squib accounts for the inconsistencies in the occurrence of genitive of negation with the Russian verb byt’ ‘to be’ and other genitive verbs by distinguishing two independent lexical entries for byt’ with a specified location that have differing s…
Takahashi and Hulsey (2009) suggest that wholesale late merger is controlled by case. This article presents novel evidence for this idea from Condition C reconstruction effects in Mongolian local and long-distance scrambling. Departing from previous ac…
Branan and Erlewine (2022) argue for the existence of an Ā-probe that can only be satisfied if its goal is the closest DP. The motivation for such a probe comes from a series of relativization strategies in several languages that appear to only target …
To explain seemingly idiosyncratic restrictions on long passivization of causative/perception verbs in English and Brazilian Portuguese, we show that (a) long passives are blocked wherever the complement of a causative/perception verb constitutes a Voi…
Through analyses of Russian voicing assimilation and German dorsal fricative assimilation, this article argues for a restricted version of structure preservation and a stratal model of Optimality Theory. Structure preservation (Kiparsky 1985) prohibits…
This article develops a formal definition of Minimal Search to evaluate the idea that Agree and Labeling can be reduced to Minimal Search. Different aspects of the search algorithm used in Minimal Search (i.e., breadth-first vs. depth-first search, par…
English VP-preposing allows VP modifiers to remain on the right (John said he would arrive on Tuesday, and arrive he did, on Tuesday). The classic analysis of this invokes VP constituency, claiming that the modifiers are right-adjoined to VP and strand…