Dimensions of Ellipsis: Investigations in Turkish

Title of Document: DIMENSIONS OF ELLIPSIS: INVESTIGATIONS IN TURKISH Atakan Ince, Ph.D., 2009 Directed by: Distinguished University Professor, Howard Lasnik, Department of Linguistics This dissertation examines the elliptical structures of (a) sluicing (John called someone, but I don’t know who!), (b) fragment answers (A: Who did John call?, B: Mary!), (c) gapping (John is eating ice-cream, and Mary apple pie!), and (d) Right Node Raising (John cooked and Mary ate the apple pie!) in Turkish and gives a ‘PF-deletion’-based analysis of all these elliptical structures. As to sluicing and fragment answers, evidence in support of PF-deletion comes from P-(non-)stranding and Case Matching, respectively. Further, these elliptical structures are island-insensitive in Turkish. As to gapping, this study gives a ‘movement + deletion’ analysis, in which remnants in the second conjunct raise to the left periphery of the second conjunct and the rest of the second conjunct is elided. One striking property of gapping in Turkish is that it is a root phenomenon; in other words, it cannot occur in complement clauses, for instance. As to Right Node Raising, again, a PF-deletion analysis is given: the identical element(s) in the first conjunct is/are elided under identity with (an) element(s) in the second conjunct. The striking property of RNR is that remnants in this elliptical structure may not be clausemate, in contrast to other elliptical structures –where remnants can be non-clause-mate under very specific contexts. This, I suggest, is due to the fact that PF-deletion in RNR applies at a later derivational stage than in other elliptical structures. In this stage, a syntactic derivation consists of linearized (sub-)lexical forms, where there is no hierarchical representation. This also suggests that Markovian system exists in grammar. In brief, this thesis looks at different elliptical structures in Turkish, and gives arguments for PF-deletion for all these elliptical structures, which has interesting implications for the generative theory.