Conférencier : Craig Sailor (Assistant Professor in Linguistics, Trinity College Dublin)

Date : le 24 janvier 2024, de 12h45 à 13h45

Titre : A modular theory of elliptical silence

Résumé : Most syntacticians assume that ellipsis involves "deletion at PF", yet surprisingly few attempts have been made to identify the actual mechanism(s) responsible for its characteristic silence. I pursue this matter assuming a strictly modular architecture, which turns out to significantly constrain the hypothesis space. In the first half of the talk, I argue that widely-adopted phonological deletion accounts should be excluded both on theoretical grounds (they are inherently anti-modular: the phonology cannot interpret syntactic features responsible for ellipsis licensing) as well as on empirical grounds (they make the wrong predictions: ellipsis can disrupt allomorph selection, it can salvage ineffability, etc.). For elliptical silence to arise post-syntactically – i.e., "at PF'' – it cannot be derived by phonological deletion; rather, it must take effect during Vocabulary Insertion (VI). While this argumentation is mostly novel, the conclusion is not: it is becoming increasingly widespread in the recent ellipsis literature. Existing accounts assume that, following the successful licensing of ellipsis within the syntax, VI is then instructed not to insert any exponents within the ellipsis site. However, within a strictly-modular architecture of the sort I adopt, the syntax cannot be in the business of telling a post- (i.e., non-) syntactic operation when or how to do its job. What is required, and what I aim to provide in the second half of the talk, is a fully modular theory in which elliptical silence arises due to VI's successful application, rather than its failed application---in other words, a theory in which VI inserts silence. I develop such an account by appealing to non-terminal insertion of a null exponent at the ellipsis site, overwriting any previously-inserted material therein. The result is a theory in which ellipsis is, essentially, a dramatic case of portmanteau suppletion. This opens the door to a new way of looking at the ellipsis vs. proform distinction, and at the deep vs. surface distinction among anaphors more generally.