Papers and Volumes

Current Manuscripts

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Noun phrase ellipsis in competition — In prep • Abstract
The distribution of noun phrase ellipsis (NPE) in English appears to be limited by the distribution of the N⁰ pro-form one, but understanding how these two phenomena interact remains a challenge. I argue that one is derivationally unrelated to NPE and that they are not complementary reflexes of the same phenomenon. I propose instead that they compete to realize anaphoric relations between sub-DP constituents. I sketch how this might work, by appealing to interface conditions on one and NPE, arguing that they stand in categorically different relations to F-marked material in their domains. I then look at some of the empirical problems for this analysis.

Predicate clefting and the theory of head movement — In prep • Abstract
Predicate clefts come in two forms, one in which a verbal phrase is topicalized (typically vP), and another in which only a verb is topicalized. I begin this paper by defending the view that, at least in some languages, the topicalized verb is a bare head (typically a v⁰). I then extend my 2016 analysis of predicate clefts to cases where only v⁰ (rather than a vP) is topicalized. These additional data show that head movement must feed A′-movement, providing evidence that head movement cannot be a purely PF phenomenon and ruling out certain approaches to head movement that apply after Spell Out.

Freezing head movement — In prep. • Abstract
Despite displaying both verb movement and verb phrase ellipsis, Scandinavian languages do not display verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis, as predicted by Goldberg (2005). Sailor's (to appear) analysis of this fact yields the appealing idea that the difference between languages with and without verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis has to do with which heads attract the verb. When combined with Aelbrecht's (2010) theory of derivational freezing, the difference between Scandinavian and other verb-movement languages falls out. But when we turn to verb phrase topicalization, a similar dichotomy appears: Languages with verb movement strand verbs, but Scandinavian does not. In light of this fact, this paper investigates what is necessary to preserve Sailor's intuition that verb-stranding behavior is related to the head that attracts the verb.

2019

C-command and Local Dislocation in the Danish DP — LingBuzz • Abstract
Submitted to Linguistic Inquiry.
In this reply, I reevaluate Hankamer and Mikkelsen's (2005, et seq.) claim that the definite suffix in Danish DPs appears when the definite determiner is adjacent to a minimal N. The central observation I make is that this analysis does not allow any nominal morphological structure to be built in the syntax, which is incompatible with the standard goals of Distributed Morphology. The problem is with the proposal that D_[DEF] is realized as a suffix when it takes a minimal N as its sister: Mainstream DM proposes that there is no such thing as a minimal N. I propose instead that D_[DEF] is realized as a suffix when it immediately c-commands the Num head. Adjunction of adjectives and relative clauses to Num interrupts this relation, resulting in D_[DEF] being realized as the article.

2018

The movement of licensing heads and the timing of ellipsis — Under review • LingBuzz • Abstract
Under review for The Timing of Ellipsis.
This paper investigates the interaction of head movement and ellipsis licensing. I show that the apparent movement of ellipsis-licensing heads does not extend the domain of ellipsis at LF or PF, an issue that has largely gone unobserved and remains to be addressed in current theories of ellipsis licensing. I argue that adopting a non-movement analysis of head movement avoids the problem on the traditional view that ellipsis is essentially an interface phenomenon triggered by licensing heads. I then discuss what happens if we assume that ellipsis occurs during the narrow-syntactic derivation and whether it can provide a better account of the facts introduced earlier. I argue that effects similar to those discussed before may still arise under this view and that blocking them requires stipulating an order of operations imposed by ellipsis licensing heads.

2017

Multiple wh-movement and extraction from VPE sites — Paper • Abstract
In LaCara, Moulton, and Tessier. 2017. A Schrift to Fest Kyle Johnson. Amherst: Linguistics Open Access Publications, 1. 207–218.
It has proven difficult to understand what drives apparent wh-movement in languages with multiple sluicing that lack multiple wh-movement. Many authors, including Abels and Dayal (2017), Gärtner (2002), and Richards 2001, propose that the appearance of multiple wh-remnants in these languages is the result of an interaction of covert wh-chains with ellipsis: Ellipsis of the tail of a covert wh-movement chain forces pronunciation of a higher link in the chain, deriving exceptional wh-movement. Although this makes for an elegant analysis of multiple sluicing, I argue in this short paper that the assumptions underlying the analysis appear to make unwelcome predictions about wh-movement out of verb phrase ellipsis sites. Verb phrase ellipsis should motivate exceptional multiple wh-movement, but it does not appear to do so.

A Schrift to Fest Kyle Johnson — Available Online
Nicholas LaCara, Keir Moulton, and Anne-Michelle Tessier (eds.). Amherst: Linguistics Open Access Publications. DOI: 10.7275/R57D2S95

2016

Evidence for Deletion in As-parentheticals — Paper • Manuscript • Abstract
The Linguistic Review, 33(4): 579–610.

This paper investigates the use of ellipsis diagnostics to determine whether deletion has occurred in as-parentheticals. As-parentheticals look as though they contain verb phrase ellipsis, but Potts (2002) argues that they do not. A number of diagnostics that have been used to distinguish ellipsis from null pro-forms are discussed in some detail. These diagnostics show that the deletion process in as-parentheticals is distinct from canonical verb phrase ellipsis. Instead, it shares properties with comparative deletion (Kennedy 2002). Thus, I argue that once a broader range of facts is considered, we need to include some manner of deletion in the derivation as-parentheticals.

Anaphora, Inversion, and Focus — Dissertation • Abstract
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1 September 2016.
My doctoral research focuses on a class of constructions known as as-parentheticals, represented by the bracketed material in the following example:

- Mary loves John, [as might Sally].

This construction is significant in several ways: 1) It obligatorily lacks an overt verb phrase, 2) The meaning of the missing verb phrase is inherited from the phrase to which it adjoins, and 3) subjects in as-parentheticals appear after auxiliary verbs rather than before them.

tl;dr: I argue that as-parentheticals are syntactically (and semantically) similar to equatives. A′-movement introduces an island violation that verb phrase ellipsis must ameliorate to make the structure pronounceable. This A′-movement is responsible for the strict locality conditions on the antecedent, not ellipsis. The need to focus the subject is in part responsible for the non-canonical placement of subjects.

First, I argue that despite previous research on the topic (Potts 2002, LaCara 2015), verb phrases go missing in this construction due to verb phrase ellipsis -- the typical operation that deletes verb phrases. Evidence for this comes from other languages, including Dutch and Spanish, where I argue as-parentheticals can only contain clauses where ellipsis is independently possible. The ellipsis explains how as-parentheticals get their meanings, but since ellipsis is normally optional, this raises questions about the obligatory nature of the ellipsis.

I account for why the deletion in as-parentheticals must be obligatory by building on work on comparatives, which also host obligatory ellipsis. Potts (2002) demonstrates that as-parentheticals contain an A-bar dependency similar to comparatives. Following his work, I show that this can be used to account for some unusual locality restrictions in as-parentheticals. This same A-bar dependency, I argue, also explains the obligatory deletion. Under the model of Kennedy and Merchant (2000), I argue that the deletion ameliorates and island violation introduced by the movement.

The final chapter of my dissertation investigates the unusual subject placement in as-parentheticals. This placement, I argue, is a last-resort phenomenon (see Weir 2014), driven by the obligatory deletion just described. This placement is contrasted with other non-canonical subject placements (like locative inversion), and I offer an account of how PF constraints can drive these phenomena.

Verb Phrase Movement as a Window Into Head Movement — Paper • Manuscript • Abstract
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 1, 17:1–14

Since Chomsky (2001) suggested that head movement might be a PF operation, there has been debate about the proper place of head movement in the grammar. The interaction of verb movement with verb phrase fronting can shed light on how and when head movement occurs. This paper looks at cases where verb phrase fronting generates two copies of the verb (as in Portuguese or Hebrew), one in the fronted vP and one in an inflectional position, showing how a PF approach to head movement can explain this pattern while addressing some potential problems in other languages.

2015

Discourse Inversion and Deletion in As-parentheticals — Paper • Manuscript • Abstract
In Kluck, Ott, and de Vries. 2015. Parenthesis and Ellipsis. Cross-linguistic and Theoretical Perspectives. Berlin: De Gruyter/Mouton.
In this paper, I investigate the syntax of inverting as-parentheticals, a subclass of parenthetical as-clause that is anaphorically dependent on a previously uttered predicate that, in addition, exhibits properties of certain kinds of discourse inversion identified by Birner (1994). I argue that these constructions contain deletion, following recent work on predicate as-parentheticals. I go on to show that some of the unusual syntactic properties in inverting as-parentheticals are shared with other sorts of discourse inversion constructions (as seen in recent work by Bern Samko), and that these properties can be explained if we provide the constructions similar derivations.

2014

Inflectional displacement and inflectional iteration — Paper • Abstract
Generals Paper, University of Massachusetts Amherst

This paper proposes that placement of plural agreement morphology after clitics in Spanish imperatives is the result of the interaction of syntactic word building with PF constraints that motivate unfaithful mappings of the underlying syntactic structure to linear order. I start with the assumption that the syntax is responsible for generating base structures for words. In dialects displaying inflectional displacement, where agreement suffixes appear after or between clitics, I argue that PF constraints on the placement of morphemes place clitics and agreement suffixes in competition for the same position(s) in a word. This competition gives rise to the various displacement patterns observed. In the case of inflectional iteration, where multiple agreement suffixes appear, I propose that the separate agreement suffixes are the result of multiple heads in the clausal spine sharing agreement features via syntactic Agree. Placement of the suffixes is again determined by PF constraints, and I propose an approach here that relies on restrictions on Spanish phonotactics. Though they involve the same morphological material in the same domain, the analyses I pursue suggest that inflectional displacement and iteration are inherently different phenomena, given that the analysis of each phenomenon is fundamentally different. I argue that the approaches in this paper are superior to previous accounts, specifically Harris and Halle (2005) and Harris 1998, in that the approaches here are more constrained and better fit the attested data.

Focus Conditions on Locative Inversion Block Ellipsis — Paper • Abstract
Manuscript, University of Massachusetts Amherst
A squib on why verb phrase ellipsis cannot happen in clauses that contain locative inversion. The main argument is that subjects are low enough in the structure to be targeted by VPE, but since these subjects must receive focus they cannot be deleted. I also look at cases of VPE that contain embedded sluices and argue that these can be explained if a semantic identity constraint is assumed. Several of the issues raised here are taken up in my dissertation.

2013

Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of NELS — Volume 1 • Volume 2 • Table of Contents
Lena Fainleib, Nicholas LaCara, and Yangsook Park (eds.). Amherst: GLSA.

2012

Deletion in As-Parentheticals — Paper • Abstract
Generals Paper, University of Massachusetts Amherst
This paper argues, contra Potts (2002), that as-parentheticals include an ellipsis like operation in their derivation, and that this operation is comparative deletion (of the sort argued for in Kennedy 2002). This paper argues that the same operation involved in as-parentheticals with canonical word order can also be used to explain what is happening in so-called inverting as-parentheticals.

Predicate Which-Appositives — Paper • Abstract
In Choi, Hogue, Punske, Tat, Schertz, and Trueman. 2012. Proceedings of the Poster Session of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), held April, 2011 Tucson: Coyote Papers.
Predicate which appositives are a kind of parenthetical relative clause that take as their antecedents syntactic material denoting a predicate. These constructions have most notably been worked on by Potts (2002). My interest in the construction is a number of ellipsis-like properties that they show in spite of the fact that there is (evidently) overt wh-movement in the construction from the position where a VP (or other phrase) has apparently been deleted. My analysis borrows the idea that a VP can be pronominalized, following Houser, et al (2007), and that this can be used to explain why a wh-pronoun seems to take the place of the missing VP, which appears to be syntactically present and fully specified.

2011

A Definite Problem — Paper • Abstract
In LaCara, Thompson, and Tucker. 2011. Morphology at Santa Cruz: Papers in Honor of Jorge Hankamer. Santa Cruz: Linguistics Research Center
This project aims to investigate definiteness marking as it occurs in Standard Swedish. The project grew out of work on Danish in Distributed Morphology started by Hankamer and Mikkelsen (2005) and builds on observations by several authors about the relation of the definite article and definite suffix with various aspects of the semantics of definite descriptions in Swedish. The above paper appears in Morphology at Santa Cruz (see below).

One-Anaphora is not ellipsis — Paper • Abstract
Manuscript, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
A response to the notion, revived and suggested in works like Elbourne 2001 and Harley 2007, that noun phrase ellipsis is involved in the derivation of anaphoric one. I argue against this idea, using typical ellipsis diagnostics. This paper is currently being revised.

Morphology at Santa Cruz: Papers in Honor of Jorge Hankamer — Available Online
Nicholas LaCara, Anie Thompson, and Matthew A. Tucker (eds.). Santa Cruz: Linguistics Research Center

2010

Verbal Ellipsis in the Nominal Domain — Paper • Abstract
Masters Thesis, Univeristy of California Santa Cruz
The culmination of this project is represented by my MA Thesis (defended 6 May 2010, UCSC). In this thesis I demonstrate that classical theories of verb phrase ellipsis cannot account for the ungrammaticality of cases of VPE inside of Abney-style poss-ing DPs when the antecedent is located in another sort of phrase (for example Harvey gesticulated wildly because of Sally's gesticulating wildly vs. *Harvey gesticulated wildly because of Sally's.). Since my thesis, I have been looking at the problem in a Rooth/Heim-type of focus theory of Ellipsis, which will hopefully resolve some of the remaining problems.

Talks and Posters

2019

Predicate clefting and the timing of head movement (2019) — Abstract • CLA Poster
2019 Canadian Linguistic Society meeting, University of British Columbia, 1 June 2019
Recent work on head movement proposes it is derived by an operation distinct from phrasal movement, but little attention has been paid to differences between alternative approaches to head movement. I argue predicate clefts provide evidence had movement is not a post-syntactic operation; some portion of the phenomenon happens before Spell Out. Still, I argue head movement is not derived by the process deriving phrasal movement. A predictive theory of predicate clefts requires a non-movement approach to head movement but not a post-syntactic one.

2018

Modal complement anaphora and the distribution of parenthetical gaps — Abstract • Handout
Workshop in memory of Luis Vicente Universiteit of Leiden, Netherlands. 6 July 2018

Anaphoric one: When ellipsis is blocked — Handout
Reference beyond the DP: Towards a Crosslinguistic Typology of the Syntax and Semantics of Proforms
40. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, Stuttgart, Germany. 7 March 2018

Head movement and ellipsis licensing — Abstract • Handout
92nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Salt Lake City, UT, 5 January 2018

2017

The inflectional poverty of the Faorese past tense — Handout
Morphologie à Montréal, Ottawa et Toronto 2, Université du Québec à Montréal, 19 November 2017

2016

A Germanic verb movement paradox — Handout
Workshop on the Status of Head Movement in Linguistic Theory, Stanford University, 16–17 September 2016

Verb phrase movement as a window into head movement — Poster • Handout • Abstract
The 90th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Washington, DC, January 2016

2015

Ellipsis is not Spell-Out: What Scandinavian tells us about ellipsis — Handout
Grasping Ellipsis, University of Campinas, Brazil, 4–5 May, 2015

2014

Why there is no verb-stranding in (Mainland) Scandinavian — Abstract • Handout
29th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop
University of York, UK, 26 September 2014

2013

VP-Topicalization and Verb Movement — Handout
Handout from talk at *ST@R, Rutgers, May 2013

Inversion, Deletion, and Focus in As-parentheticals
Parenthesis and Ellipsis: Cross-Linguistic and Theoretical Perspectives
Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Potsdam, 15 March 2013

Ellipsis, locative inversion and why they are bad together — Poster • Handout • Abstract
Poster given at the 87th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Boston, January 2013
A hitherto unoticed problem for the standard account of VP ellipsis. From the LSA Booklet:

*On the table lay a book, and on the sofa did too:
Ellipsis, inversion, and why they are bad together

Since Merchant 2001, the standard picture of ellipsis has been that a functional head bearing a feature [E] licenses the deletion of its complement at PF. Certain kinds of inversion structures, like locative inversion, pose a problem for such an approach. The theory as currently understood predicts that VP ellipsis should be possible in sentences containing such structures, but as the title of this poster shows, they are ungrammatical. This poster presents an account of these facts, and investigates solutions that do not contravene Merchant-like theories.

2012

Comparative Deletion in as Parentheticals — Handout
Ellipsis2012, University of Vigo, Spain, 10 November 2012

Subject Pseudogapping? — Handout
Eco5, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 7 April 2012

2011

Predicate Which-Appositives — Paper • Poster • Abstract
Poster presented at the 29th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 22–24 April 2011.
Predicate which appositives are a kind of parenthetical relative clause that take as their antecedents syntactic material denoting a predicate. These constructions have most notably been worked on by Potts (2002). My interest in the construction is a number of ellipsis-like properties that they show in spite of the fact that there is (evidently) overt wh-movement in the construction from the position where a VP (or other phrase) has apparently been deleted. My analysis borrows the idea that a VP can be pronominalized, following Houser, et al (2007), and that this can be used to explain why a wh-pronoun seems to take the place of the missing VP, which appears to be syntactically present and fully specified.