Not all genders are created equal: Evidence from nominal ellipsis in Greek

Abstract

It is well understood that the analysis of elliptical phenomena has the potential to inform our understanding of the syntax-semantics interface, as it forces the analyst to confront directly the mechanisms for generating meanings without the usual forms that give rise to them. But facts from ellipsis have an equal potential to illuminate our understanding of the structure of the lexicon. A close investigation of nominal ellipses in Greek shows that gender features are not all created equal: the values of some gender features (masculine, feminine) on some nominals must be distinguished from the very same values as they are encoded on other nouns. This conclusion is forced upon us by the following generalization: (1) Gender and ellipsis generalization: When gender is variable (as on determiners, clitics, adjectives, and some nominals under certain conditions), it may be ignored under ellipsis. When gender is invariant (on nouns in argument positions, and on some nominals in predicative uses), it may not be ignored under ellipsis. I argue that this generalization finds a relatively straightforward account in a derivational framework using an LF-copy theory of ellipsis identity and resolution, but not under semantic or LF-identity accounts (whether these latter are..

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Jason Merchant
University of Chicago

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