UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 13 (2001)
Determiner sharing as an instance of dependent
ellipsis
PETER ACKEMA & KRISZTA SZENDRŐI
In English coordinate ellipsis constructions, the determiner
of a DP in the second conjunct can sometimes be omitted under identity with the
determiner of the corresponding constituent of the first conjunct, a phenomenon
known as determiner sharing. Following Williams’s (1997) analysis of
nonconstituent ellipsis, we argue that determiner sharing involves a two-step
elision process: coordinate ellipsis plus a process we term dependent ellipsis.
Dependent ellipsis is the process by which a coordinate null head licenses the
heads of its direct dependents to be null as well. We show that, under the
hypothesis that dependent ellipsis is not a transitive relation, the properties
of determiner sharing constructions follow, adding some new observations to
those noted before in the literature. For example, we explain that subject
determiner sharing is usually only possible if Tense is gapped in the second
conjunct, while object determiner sharing is dependent on Verb-gapping.
However, we also show that in certain cases subject D-sharing may be possible
without T-gapping and, vice versa, there are cases where T-gapping does not
license subject D-sharing.
[PDF file]