Salvation by Deletion in Nupe

Abstract

Abstract This article presents novel data from ellipsis in Nupe, a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria, and explores its theoretical implications. Three claims are made. First, sluicing in Nupe counter-exemplifies Merchant 2001’s Sluicing-COMP Generalization. Second, ungrammatical outputs resulting from extraction from perfect clauses are salvaged by ellipsis, arguing against Kandybowicz’s (2009) analysis where such a restriction is a narrow syntactic derivational constraint. Third, COMP-trace effects in Nupe are also repaired under ellipsis, lending support to Kandybowicz’s (2009) claim that the Nupe COMP-trace effect is an interface phenomenon. Our findings provide evidence for the claim that ellipsis can repair certain otherwise ill-formed structures.