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Wh-movement and the syntax of sluicing1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2008

MAZIAR TOOSARVANDANI
MAZIAR TOOSARVANDANI*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
*
Author's address: Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, 1203 Dwinelle Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A.mtoosarvandani@berkeley.edu
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Abstract

Sluicing – the elliptical construction in which all of a constituent question goes missing except for the interrogative phrase – is commonly analyzed as involving movement of the interrogative phrase to Spec-CP followed by deletion of TP (Ross 1969, Merchant 2001). In this paper, I examine how well the movement-plus-deletion analysis extends to Farsi, a wh-in situ language that, surprisingly, has a sluicing construction nearly identical to its English counterpart. I argue that the interrogative phrase in Farsi sluicing escapes deletion not by wh-movement as in English but by a type of focus movement. This operation, which normally applies very generally and is optional, is restricted in sluicing contexts in two ways: (i) it is obligatory, and (ii) it only applies to interrogative phrases. I propose a formal implementation that integrates these two properties into the licensing requirement on deletion, advancing the current understanding of the syntax of sluicing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , November 2008 , pp. 677 - 722
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

[1]

I thank Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, Annahita Farudi, Michael Houser, Sharon Inkelas, Kyle Johnson, Jason Merchant, Line Mikkelsen, Chris Potts, and audiences at the Berkeley Syntax and Semantics Circle, NELS 38, the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) Syntax Reading Group, and the 2008 Annual Meeting of the LSA in Chicago for their helpful comments and criticisms. Two anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees provided valuable suggestions for improving this paper. I am also grateful to Mahin Azimian, Maryam Azimian, Massy Azimian, and Abbas Toosarvandani for their native speaker judgments.

References

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