Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T04:32:22.868Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

English fragments, Minimize Domains, and Minimize Forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2020

JOANNA NYKIEL  and
JOHN A. HAWKINS
JOANNA NYKIEL
Affiliation:
Kyung Hee University
JOHN A. HAWKINS
Affiliation:
University of California Davis and Cambridge University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We offer an account of preposition drop under clausal ellipsis in terms of two language processing principles: Minimize Domains and Minimize Forms. We argue that when Minimize Domains operates within the PP domain, it disfavors preposition drop due to the preferred independent processability of the PP fragment. When it operates within the VP domain it favors preposition drop in proportion to the number and strength of semantic dependencies between V and P in a given language: the more dependencies there are, and the stronger they are, the stronger the preference for preposition drop. In this way fragments are avoided with long dependencies between P and a distant V. We demonstrate this pattern in English corpora and propose it as an explanation for the typologically unusual preference that English shows for NP fragments. Minimize Forms supports preposition drop in easy-to-process environments cross-linguistically and in English when the more minimal fragment (NP) can be easily linked to its correlate in the antecedent, disfavoring preposition drop elsewhere. The predictions of Minimize Domains and Minimize Forms receive support from a mixed-effects regression model fitted to data from spoken US English, and can be understood as motivations for construction-specific constraints and preferences in clausal ellipsis.

Keywords

ellipsisfragmentsprocessing principlessemantic dependenciespreposition dropMinimize DomainsMinimize Forms
Type
Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 411 - 443
Check for updates
Copyright
© UK Cognitive Linguistics Association, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abels, K. (2017). On the interaction of P-stranding and sluicing in Bulgarian. In Mueller-Reichau, O. & Guhl, M. (eds), Aspects of Slavic linguistics: formal grammar, lexicon and communication (Vol. 16, pp. 1–28). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Abels, K. (2019). On ‘sluicing’ with apparent massive pied-piping. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 37(4), 1205–1271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ariel, M. (1990). Accessing noun-phrase antecedents. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Arregi, C. (2010). Ellipsis in split questions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 28(3), 539–592.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arregui, A., Clifton, C. Jr., Frazier, L. & Moulton, K. (2006). Processing elided verb phrases with flawed antecedents: the recycling hypothesis. Journal of Memory and Language 55(2), 232–246.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Arts, A. (2004). Overspecification in instructive texts. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, TilburgUniversity. Online <https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/871339/304407.pdf>.Google Scholar
Arts, A., Maes, A., Noordman, L. & Jansen, C. (2011). Overspecification facilitates object identification. Journal of Pragmatics 43(1), 361–374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barton, E. (1991). Nonsentential constituents and theories of phrase structure. In Leffel, K. & Bouchard, D. (eds), Views on phrase structure (pp. 193–214). Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barton, E. (2006). Toward a nonsentential analysis in generative grammar. In Progovac, L., Paesani, K., Casielles-Suárez, E. & Barton, E. (eds), The syntax of nonsententials: multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 11–31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B. & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67, 1–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bechhofer, R. (1976). Reduced wh-questions. In Hankamer, J. & Aissen, J. L. (eds), Harvard studies in syntax and semantics (Vol. 2, pp. 31–67). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Beecher, H. (2008). Pragmatic inference in the interpretation of sluiced prepositional phrases. UC San Diego: Department of Linguistics. Retrieved from https://beta.escholarship.org/uc/item/2261c0tg.Google Scholar
Biber, D., Johannsson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Brinton, L. & Closs Traugott, E. (2005). Lexicalization and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cable, S. & Harris, J. A. (2011). On the grammatical status of PP-pied-piping in English: results from sentence-rating experiments. In Grant, M. & Harris, J. A. (eds), University of Massachusetts occasional papers in linguistics 38: processing linguistic structure (pp. 1–22). Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications.Google Scholar
Caha, P. (2011). Case in adpositional phrases. Unpublished manuscript, Center for Advanced Study inTheoreticalLinguistics. Online <http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001325>.Google Scholar
Caplan, D. & Waters, G. (2013). Memory mechanisms supporting syntactic comprehension. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 20(2), 243–268.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chung, S. (2006). Sluicing and the lexicon: the point of no return. In Cover, R. T. & Kim, Y. (eds), BLS 31: general session and parasession on prosodic variation and change (pp. 73–91). Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Chung, S. (2013). Syntactic identity in sluicing: how much and why. Linguistic Inquiry 44(1), 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chung, S., Ladusaw, W. & McCloskey, J. (1995). Sluicing and logical form. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3(3), 239–282.Google Scholar
Claridge, C. (2000). Multi-word verbs in Early Modern English: a corpus-based approach. Amsterdam: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craik, F. I. M. & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: a framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 11, 671–684.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culicover, P. (2016). Fragments all the way down. Workshop on Fragments, Saarbrücken University.Google Scholar
Culicover, P. & Jackendoff, R. (2005). Simpler syntax. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culicover, P. & Jackendoff, R. (2012). Same-except: a domain-general cognitive relation and how language expresses it. Language 88, 305–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, C. & Katsos, N. (2009). Are interlocuters as sensitive to over-informativeness as they are to under-informativeness? PRE-CogSci workshop: production of referring expressions. Austin, TX: Cognitive ScienceSociety. Online <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264873903_Are_Interlocutors_as_Sensitive_to_Over-informativeness_as_they_are_to_Under-informativeness>.Google Scholar
Denison, D. (1981). Aspects of the history of English group-verbs: with particular attention to the syntax of the Ormulum. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Oxford University.Google Scholar
Denison, D. (1985). Why Old English had no prepositional passive. English Studies 66(3), 189–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickey, M. W. & Bunger, A. (2011). Comprehension of elided structure: evidence from sluicing. Language and Cognitive Processes 26(1), 63–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emonds, J. E. & Faarlund, J. T. (2014). English: the language of the Vikings (Olomouc Modern Language Monographs 3). Olomouc: Palacký University.Google Scholar
Fortin, C. (2007). Indonesian sluicing and verb phrase ellipsis: description and explanation in a Minimalist framework. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Futrell, R. (in press). Dependency locality as an explanatory principle for word order. Language.Google Scholar
Futrell, R., Mahowald, K. & Gibson, E. (2015). Large-scale evidence of dependency length minimization in 37 languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(33), 10336–10341.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gallo, D. A., Meadow, N. G., Johnson, E. L. & Foster, K. T. (2008). Deep levels of processing elicit a distinctiveness heuristic: evidence from the criterial recollection task. Journal of Memory and Language 58(4), 1095–1111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, E. (1998). Linguistic complexity: locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition 68(1), 1–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gibson, E. (2000). The dependency locality theory: a distance-based theory of linguistic complexity. In Miyashita, Y., Marantz, P. & O’Neil, W. (eds), Image, language, brain (pp. 95–112). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, E., Futrell, R., Piantadosi, S.T., Dautriche, I., Mahowald, K., Bergen, L. & Levy, R. (2019). How efficiency shapes human language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 23(5), 389–407.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ginzburg, J. (2012). The interactive stance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginzburg, J. & Miller, P. (2018). Ellipsis in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. In van Creanenbroeck, J. & Temmerman, T. (eds), The Oxford handbook of ellipsis (pp. 75–121). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, J. & Sag, I. A. (2000). Interrogative investigations: the form, meaning and use of English interrogatives. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Gordon, P. C., Grosz, B. J. & Gilliom, L. A. (1993). Pronouns, names, and the centering of attention in discourse. Cognitive Science 17(3), 311–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, M., Clifton, C. Jr. & Frazier, L. (2012). The role of non-actuality implicatures in processing elided constituents. Journal of Memory and Language 66(1), 326–343.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gundel, J. K., Hedberg, N. & Zacharski, R. (1993). Cognitive status and the form of anaphoric expressions in discourse. Language 69, 274–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hankamer, J. & Sag, I. A. (1976). Deep and surface anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 7(3), 391–428.Google Scholar
Harris, J. A. (2015). Structure modulates similarity-based interference: an eye tracking study. Frontiers in Psychology 6, e01839.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, J. A. & Carlson, K. (2019). Correlate not optional: PP sprouting and parallelism in ‘much less’ ellipsis. Glossa 4(1), doi: http://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.707CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haspelmath, M. (forthcoming). Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: form-frequency correspondences and predictability. MS, University of Leipzig. Online <https://www.academia.edu/37510601/Explaining_grammatical_coding_asymmetries_Form-frequency_correspondences_and_predictability>..>Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1994). A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (2000). The relative order of prepositional phrases in English: going beyond manner-place-time. Language Variation and Change 11(3), 231–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (2004). Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (2014a). Cross-linguistic variation and efficiency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (2014b). Patterns in competing motivations and the interaction of principles. In MacWhinney, B., Malchukov, A. & Moravcsik, E. (eds), Competing motivations in grammar and usage (pp. 54–69). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (2019). Word-external properties in a typology of Modern English: a comparison with German. English Language and Linguistics 23(3), 701–727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hofmeister, P. (2007). Facilitating memory retrieval in natural language comprehension. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Hofmeister, P. (2008). The after-effects of linguistic form choice on comprehension. Poster presented at the 21st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Chapel Hill, 13–15 March.Google Scholar
Hofmeister, P. (2011). Representational complexity and memory retrieval in language comprehension. Language and Cognitive Processes 26(3), 376–405.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hofmeister, P., Jaeger, F. T., Arnon, I., Sag, I. A. & Snider, N. (2013). The source ambiguity problem: distinguishing the effects of grammar and processing on acceptability judgments. Language and Cognitive Processes 28(1/2), 48–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hofmeister, P., Jaeger, F. T, Sag, I. A., Arnon, I. & Snider, N. (2007). Locality and accessibility in wh-questions. In Featherston, S. & Sternefeld, W. (eds), Roots: linguistics in search of its evidential base (pp. 185–206). Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. & Tily, H. (2011) On language utility: processing complexity and communicative efficiency. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 2(3), 323–335.Google ScholarPubMed
Karimi, H. K., Fukumura, K., Ferreira, F. & Pickering, M. J. (2014). The effect of noun phrase length on the form of referring expressions. Memory and Cognition 42(6), 993–1009.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kertz, L. (2013a). Verb phrase ellipsis: the view from information structure. Language 89, 390–428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kertz, L. (2013b). Discourse expectations and the grammar of ellipsis. Providence, RI: Brown University.Google Scholar
Kim, C. & Runner, J. (2017). The division of labor in explanations of verb phrase ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy 41(1), 41–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leung, T. (2014). The Preposition Stranding Generalization and conditions on sluicing: evidence from Emirati Arabic. Linguistic Inquiry 45(2), 332–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levelt, W. (1989). Speaking: from intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levelt, W. & Kelter, S. (1982). Surface form and memory in question answering. Cognitive Psychology 14(1), 7–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, L. (1982). Sluicing: a lexical interpretation procedure. In Bresnan, J. (ed.), The mental representation of grammatical relations (pp. 590–654). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levshina, N. (forthcoming). Communicative efficiency: language structure and use. MS, University of Leipzig.Google Scholar
Lewis, R. L. & Vasishth, S. (2005). An activation-based model of sentence processing as skilled memory retrieval. Cognitive Science 29(3), 375–419.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, R. L., Vasishth, S. &Van Dyke, J. A. (2006). Computational principles of working memory in sentence comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Science 10(10), 447–454.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maes, A., Arts, A. & Noordman, L. (2004). Reference management in instructive discourse. Discourse Processes 37(2), 117–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marblestone, K. L. (2007). Semantic and syntactic effects on double propositional phrase ordering across the lifespan. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Martin, A. E. & McElree, B. (2011). Direct-access retrieval during sentence comprehension: evidence from sluicing. Journal of Memory and Language 64(4), 327–343.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McElree, B. (2000). Sentence comprehension is mediated by content-addressable memory. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 29(2), 111–123.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McElree, B., Foraker, S. & Dyer, L. (2003). Memory structures that subserve sentence comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 48(1), 67–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merchant, J. (2001). The syntax of silence: sluicing, islands, and identity in ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Merchant, J. (2004). Fragments and ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy 27(6), 661–738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merchant, J. (2013). Voice and ellipsis. Linguistic Inquiry 44(1), 77–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merchant, J. (2018). Ellipsis: a survey of analytical approaches. In van Craenenbroeck, J. & Temmerman, T. (eds), The Oxford handbook of ellipsis (pp. 19–45). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, P. (2011). The choice between verbal anaphors in discourse. In Hendrickx, I., Lalitha Devi, S., Branco, A. & Mitkov, R. (eds), Anaphora processing and applications: 8th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium (DAARC 2011, Volume 7099 of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence) (pp. 82–95). Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, P. & Hemforth, B. (2014). Verb phrase ellipsis with nominal antecedents. Ms. University ParisDiderot. Online <https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0c45/a640b998d15a91d4f5ac67db81c9384f7458.pdf>.Google Scholar
Miller, P. & Pullum, G. K. (2014). Exophoric VP ellipsis. In Hofmeister, P. & Norcliffe, E. (eds), The core and the periphery: data-driven perspectives on syntax inspired by Ivan A. Sag (pp. 5–32). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Molimpakis, E. (2018). P-stranding under sluicing: acceptability and processing. Workshop Relating Elliptical Utterances to Information in Context. Stuttgart, Germany.Google Scholar
Newmeyer, F. J. (1998). Language form and language function. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Newmeyer, F. J. (2005). Possible and probable languages: a generative perspective on language typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, J. (1986). Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language 62(1), 56–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norcliffe, E., Harris, A. C. & Jaeger, T. F. (2015). Cross-linguistic psycholinguistics and its critical role in theory development: early beginnings and recent advances. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 30(9), 1009–1032.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nykiel, J. (2013). Clefts and preposition omission in sluicing. Lingua 123, 74–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nykiel, J. (2014). Semantic dependencies and the history of ellipsis alternation. In Adams, M., Brinton, L. J. & Fulk, R. D. (eds), Studies in the history of the English language VI: evidence and method in histories of English (pp. 51–70). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Nykiel, J. (2015). Constraints on ellipsis alternation: a view from the history of English. Language Variation and Change 27(2), 227–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nykiel, J. (2017). Preposition stranding and ellipsis alternation. English Language and Linguistics 21(1), 27–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Philippova, T. (2014). P-omission under sluicing, [P clitic] and the nature of P-stranding. In Kohlberger, M., Bellamy, K. & Dutton, E. (eds), Proceedings of ConSOLE XXII (pp. 133–155). Online <https://www.academia.edu/9572236/P-omission_under_sluicing_P_clitic_and_the_nature_of_P-stranding>..>Google Scholar
Rodrigues, C., Nevins, A. & Vicente, L. (2009). Cleaving the interactions between sluicing and preposition stranding. In Torck, D. & Wetzels, L. (eds), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2006 (pp. 175–198). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, J. R. (1969). Guess who? In Binnick, R., Davison, A., Green, G. & Morgan, J. (eds), Papers from the 5th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 252–286). Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Sag, I. A. & Nykiel, J. (2011). Remarks on sluicing. In S. Müller (ed.), Proceedings of the HPSG 11 Conference (pp. 188–208). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Schachter, P. (1977). Does she or doesn’t she? Linguistic Inquiry 8(4), 763–767.Google Scholar
Stjepanovic, S. (2008). P-stranding under sluicing in a non-P-stranding language? Linguistic Inquiry 39(1), 179–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stjepanovic, S. (2012). Two cases of violation repair under sluicing. In Merchant, J. & Simpson, A. (eds), Sluicing: cross-linguistic perspectives (pp. 68–82). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szczegielniak, A. (2008). Islands in sluicing in Polish. In Abner, N. & Bishop, J. (eds), Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Cascadilla Proceedings Project (pp. 404–412). Somerville, MA, USA. Online <https://www.lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/27/paper1856.pdf>.Google Scholar
Van Dyke, J. A. (2011). Cue-dependent interference in comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 65(3), 247–263.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Dyke, J. A. & Johns, C. L. (2012). Memory interference as a determinant of language comprehension. Language and Linguistics Compass 6(4), 193–211.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wiechmann, D. & Lohmann, A. (2013). Domain minimization and beyond: modeling prepositional phrase ordering. Language Variation and Change 25(1), 65–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar