Verb-second and the verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis debate

Abstract

Verb-stranding ellipsis, when a verb is stranded outside of the ellipsis site in which it originated, has been identified in a number of languages (Irish, McCloskey 1991; Hebrew, Doron 1999, Goldberg 2005; Greek, Merchant 2018; Uzbek, Gribanova, 2020; i.a.), and has been invoked productively in analyses investigating the position to which verbs move and the timing of verb movement in the grammar. Recently, Landau (2018; 2020a;b) has proposed a phase-based negative licensing condition which restricts head-stranding ellipsis and precludes verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis (VPE) altogether. He claims that apparent verb-stranding VPE must be reanalyzed either as argument ellipsis (Oku 1998; Kim 1999; Takahashi 2008), or a clause-sized ellipsis that strands main verbs (Gribanova 2018). This article approaches this debate through an analysis of head movement and head-stranding ellipsis in the Indic verb-second (V2) language Kashmiri. We show that Landau’s phase-based approach encounters empirical challenges in accounting for ellipsis in V2 languages and requires an unworkable approach to V2 itself, at odds with accounts of V2 in Kashmiri and crosslinguistically (Holmberg 1986; Travis 1991; Vikner 1995; Zwart 1997; Bhatt 1999; Munshi and Bhatt 2009; Manetta 2011). While the present article argues in favor of the standard account of ellipsis (Merchant 2001; 2008), we affirm the important contribution of Landau’s work in identifying challenges that remain for any complete account of head-stranding ellipsis licensing.