On a non-argument for cleft sources in sluicing

TROY MESSICK; MATTHEW BARROS; LUIS VICENTE; SAAB, ANDRÉS

LINGUISTIC INQUIRY

MIT press

Año: 2021 vol. 52 p. 867 - 880

0024-3892

Based on certain semantic intuitions, Barros 2012 argues that we must conclude that ellipsis does not require structural isomorphism between elided structure and its antecedent. We tackle this claim. Semantic intuitions cannot be a pointer to the analysis of silent structure. We provide empirical evidence that raises the question of to which extent our semantic intuitions about plausible articulable syntax must inform our analysis of silent structure. Here we conclude the answer to such a question must be cross-linguistically informed. We conjecture that ellipsis introduces ellipsis-specific interpretive mechanisms, so that intuitions about how the un-elided structure would be interpreted are not empirically relevant.