The Oxford Handbook of Ellipsis
Abstract
This handbook is the first volume to provide a comprehensive, in-depth, and balanced discussion of ellipsis phenomena, whereby a perceived interpretation is fuller than would be expected based solely on the presence of linguistic forms. Natural language abounds in these apparently incomplete expressions, such as I laughed but Ed didn’t, in which the final portion of the sentence, the verb ‘laugh’, remains unpronounced but is still understood. The range of phenomena involved raise general and fundamental questions about the workings of grammar, but also constitute a treasure trove of fine-grained points of inter- and intralinguistic variation. The volume is divided into four parts. In the first, the authors examine the role that ellipsis plays and how it is analyzed in different theoretical frameworks and linguistic subdisciplines, such as HPSG, construction grammar, inquisitive semantics, and computational linguistics. Chapters in the second part highlight the usefulness of ellipsis as a diagnostic tool for other linguistic phenomena including movement and islands and codeswitching, while Part III focuses instead on the types of elliptical constructions found in natural language, such as sluicing, gapping, and null complement anaphora. Finally, the last part of the book contains case studies that investigate elliptical phenomena in a wide variety of languages, including Dutch, Japanese, Persian, and Finnish Sign Language.
Keywords:
ellipsis,
interpretation,
linguistic forms,
intralinguistic variation,
theoretical framework,
natural language
Bibliographic Information
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Print Publication Date:
- Dec 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198712398
- Published online:
- Jan 2019
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198712398.001.0001
Editors
Jeroen van Craenenbroeck,
editor
Jeroen van Craenenbroeck is Associate Professor of Dutch Linguistics at KU Leuven, where he is also Vice-President of the Center for Research in Syntax, Semantics, and Phonology (CRISSP). He is the author of The Syntax of Ellipsis (OUP) and general editor of the journal Linguistic Variation (John Benjamins). His research interests include ellipsis (sluicing, swiping, spading, VP-ellipsis), expletives, verb clusters, and the left periphery of
the clause.
Tanja Temmerman,
editor
Tanja Temmerman is Assistant Professor of Dutch Linguistics at Université Saint-Louis—Bruxelles (Belgium), where she is also Lecturer in English Language and Head of the English Department. She obtained her PhD from Leiden University in 2012 with a dissertation entitled ‘Multidominance, ellipsis, and quantifier scope’. Her principal research foci lie in (generative) syntax, issues at the syntax–phonology and syntax–semantics
interfaces, Dutch dialectology, and comparative Germanic syntax. Specific topics of interest include ellipsis, the internal and external syntax of idioms, phase theory, long-distance dependencies, island effects, phrase structure, modals, and negation.
