Topic-Comment Structure, Focus Movement, and Gapping Formation

Abstract

While canonical gapping in English can be analyzed as either VPellipsis (e.g., Sag 1976 , Pesetsky 1982 , Jayaseelan 1990 , Lasnik 1999a , Johnson 2000 , Coppock 2001 , Lin 2002 , Baltin 2003 , Takahashi 2004 ) or across-the-board V/VP-movement ( Johnson 1994 , 2004 , 2006 , 2009 ), certain English-like gapping constructions in Modern Mandarin are argued to be multiple sentence fragments, formed by a series of syntactic operations that involve topicalization, focus movement, and IP-deletion.