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Wh-gap Binding and Ellipsis — a Grammar for an Input System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

Ruth Kempson
Ruth Kempson
Affiliation:
Linguistics Department, School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square. London. WCIH OXG.
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Abstract

This paper argues that pragmatic processes and syntactic constraints interact, that we can nevertheless retain the assumption that the natural language faculty is fully encapsulated, and that the problems posed by the phenomenon of gapping (bare argument ellipsis) can be resolved by analysing gapping as an instance of such interaction. A new model of language is sketched out, a model which is a formal reconstruction of assumptions about the language faculty and its relation to central cognitive processes made by Fodor. and Sperber and Wilson. A fragment is defined to cover pronominal anaphoric dependency and quantifier binding, and a new analysis of bare argument ellipsis (gapping) is presented.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , June 1991 , pp. 41 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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