The Syntax of Silence - Sluicing, Islands, and the Theory of Ellipsis

The first book-length treatment of the most cross-linguistically widespread form of ellipsis: elliptical wh-questions, known as sluices. Drawing on data from thirty languages, Merchant shows that sluicing structures are crucial to answering the fundamental questions about the nature of ellipsis and its resolution. The author also carefully documents a number of original generalizations concerning form-identity effects and the complementizer system.

About the author

Jason Merchant is Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, and is the author of many articles on ellipsis and sluicing in particular. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has been a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University and an NWO postdoctoral fellow at the University of Groningen.

Summary

This work focuses on the form of ellipsis known as sluicing, a feature of interrogative clauses, such as in "Sally's out hunting - guess what!"; and "Someone called, but I can't tell you who". The phenomenon is studied across 24 languages to try to explain it in linguistic and behavioural terms.

Additional text

This book is a clearly written, very interesting exploration of sluicing. The author presents a number of well argued, novel ideas, and sheds new light on our understanding of a phenomenon linguists have been studying for quite a while. The author has done an excellent job in also providing a thorough overview of previous approaches, and in explaining how his analysis builds on and/or diverges from them. This is definitely a very important contribution to the field.

Product details

• Authors: Jason Merchant, Merchant Jason
• Publisher: Oxford Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 16.08.2001
• EAN: 9780199243730
• ISBN: 978-0-19-924373-0
• Dimensions: 162 mm x 242 mm x 20 mm
• Weight: 556 g
• Illustrations: 17 figures
• Series: Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics; Oxford Studies in Theoretical
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Semantics, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Translating & Interpreting, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Grammar & Punctuation, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Syntax, Translation & interpretation, Grammar, syntax & morphology, Grammar, syntax and morphology, Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics, Translation and interpretation, Semantics, discourse analysis, etc