On Corrective Stripping in English

Myung-Kwan Park

(Dongguk University)

https://doi.org/10.24303/lakdoi.2017.25.1.117

∣ Myung-Kwan Park

On Corrective Stripping in English ∣

Park, Myung-Kwan. (2017). On Corrective Stripping in English. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 25(1), 117-137. This paper examines so-called corrective fragments in English where a ‘fragment’ remnant occurs after the negative particle no as a response to the preceding yes-no question. Departing from the recent works on them such as Merchant (2004), Griffith and Lipták (2014), Barros et al. (2013), and Weir (2014), we argue that no and the remnant each is typically derived from a clausal structure. The negative particle no is in fact a clausal anaphora, being derived via TP ellipsis, whereas the following remnant after the comma sign as an asyndetic coordination marker is moved out of the TP to be stripped, thus being island-sensitive. However, there are marked cases of corrective remnant-like constituents that occur inside island structure, and they may or may not involve Stripping. On an analogy with corrective but (adopting Toosarvandani’s (2013) analysis of them), we show that the marked instances involve sub-clausal coordination or Stripping inside island structure, thus obviating an island violation due to movement.

Key Words: corrective ‘fragment’, TP ellipsis/Stripping, comma coordination, corrective but, island (in)sensitivity, sub-clausal coordination

1. Introduction

In this paper, we will investigate the form and function of corrective fragments in English. Specifically, we will look into both elliptical and non-elliptical fragments. Generally, their meaning can only be comprehended in the context of the preceding utterance, usually the utterance of another conversational participant or interlocutor. Their remarkable feature is displayed by one example of corrective fragment uttered by the interlocutor B in the dialogue snippet in (1):

(1) A: Pat gave the book to Kim.

B: No, (to) ME.

A: Oh, hmmm. Pat gave the book to YOU. That changes everything.

Here, B’s fragmentary utterance rectifies the proposition asserted by the interlocutor A in his preceding utterance. The capitals are meant to indicate that the corrective element is focused.

The recent studies of corrective fragments such as Merchant (2004), Griffith and Lipták (2014), Barros et al. (2013), and Weir (2014) unanimously argue that (1B) is derived in the mode represented in (1B’) below:

(1B’) No, (to) ME1 [TP Pat gave the book (to) t1].

(1B”) No [TP Pat didn’t gave the book to Kim], (to) ME1 [TP Pat gave the book (to) t1]/Ø.

Departing from this analysis, in this paper we will rather argue, as represented in (1B“), that the negative particle no is a clausal anaphora, also being derived from TP ellipsis. As there is a clausal structure before the comma sign that functions as an asyndetic coordinating conjunction, the constituent immediately following it may be either a remnant surviving after Stripping (i.e. VP Stripping similar to Pseudogapping) or a usual XP conjunct without involving movement out of ellipsis. Thus, in essence, this paper will show that apparently fragmentary elements like the one in (1B) are derived either via Stripping (of TP or VP) or sub-clausal coordination.

2. The types of corrective fragments

In this section, we look over the conversational phenomena that fall into corrective ‘fragments’. Based on the initial findings by Gruenstein (2002), we illustrate three types of fragmentary corrective utterances that can be used by an interlocutor to rectify an utterance made by another interlocutor. Gruenstein (2002) note that the three sets of fragmentary corrective utterances have different discourse functions such as correction, substitution, and set reduction.

2.1 Correction

As an illustration of correction, consider the following example from corpora, as in (2):

(2)  (from British National Corpus, as noted in Fernández and Ginzburg (2002: 3))

A: Well I felt sure it was two hundred pounds a week.

B: No, fifty pounds ten pence per person.

In (2), B’s fragmentary utterance corrects the proposition asserted by the interlocutor A in his preceding utterance, particularly one of the constituents in it.

Gruenstein (2002) added several more made-up examples to show that some degree of syntactic parallelism/identity comes into play to ensure a felicitous correction in many cases, as in (3):

(3) a. A: John gave the book to Mary.

B: (No,) (to) ME.

b. A: Kim gave Mary the book.

B: #(No,) by DAN.

c. A: Kim was despised by Sandy.

B: (No,) by DAN.

d. A: Sandy despised Kim.

B: #(No,) by DAN.

e. A: Kim despises her.

B1: (No,) ME. (must be correcting ‘her’)

B2: (No,) I do. (must be correcting ‘Kim’)

Note that in the corrections in (3), the answer word No is actually optional, but the constituent that corrects the corresponding one in another interlocutor’s utterance receives focus.

These examples are intended to demonstrate that only the semantics of the previous utterance does not guarantee the felicity of the fragmentary corrective utterance. That is, while B’s utterance in (3c) is sensical given A’s utterance, the same correction is not acceptable in (3d) even though the proposition conveyed by A in both (3c) and (3d) is the same.

The contrast between (3a) and (3b) and that between (3c) and (3d) are taken to show that the syntactic parallelism/identity matters in the formation of corrective ‘fragments’. Merchant (2004) proposes that fragments in general are derived by clausal ellipsis; fragments as remnants are moved out of clauses before ellipsis applies to them. According to Merchant (2004), both (3b) in contrast to (3a) and (3c) in contrast to (3d) are ruled out because the ellipsis clause and the corresponding antecedent clause differ in terms of the functional category (such as Voice) that determines the syntactic form of an argument (i.e., either the corrective ‘fragment’ or its correlate), hence not meeting syntactic parallelism/identity in ellipsis. Likewise, Barros and Vicente (2015) propose the remnant condition for ellipsis, which mandates that the (syntactic) form of the remnant like a fragment be identical to that of its correlate/corresponding element in the antecedent clause. Both (3b) in contrast to (3a) and (3c) in contrast to (3d) contain the fragmentary remnants that are not identical in form to their correlate elements in the antecedent clause, thus not meeting the remnant condition for ellipsis.

2.2 Substitution

Another type which we label substitution differs from correction in that the constituent to be ‘replaced’ is explicitly mentioned as part of the larger fragmentary corrective utterance, as in (4):

(4) a. A: John gave the book to you.

B: Not (to) ME, (to) SALLY.

b. A: John took a picture of that guy over there [pointing at one         person1]

B: (No,) not HIM [pointing at one person1], HIM [pointing at one person2].

In (4a) and (4b), it is instructive to note that in the course of substitution, the actual rectifying referent is what is ‘substituted’ into the previous proposition.

2.3 Set reduction

Just or only can be used together with a fragmentary element to make a revision on the referents of a set of items mentioned in the previous utterance. Consider the following examples:

(5) a. A: Sandy gave Kim a tie and a waffle maker.

B1: (No,) Just/Only a TIE.

B2: #No, just/only a LAMP.

b. A: Alan gave almost everyone a sharp look!

B: No no! Just/Only SANDY! (Don’t exaggerate!)

Just or only is used in (5aB1) to select one of the constituents and indicate that the proposition in the previous sentence should not include the other constituent. In (5bB) it is used to redefine the size of the set of ‘everyone’ so that it now only mentions Sandy.

3. Corrective ‘fragments’ and their island (in)sensitivity

3.1 Merchant (2004) and Griffith and Lipták (2014)

Ross (1969) initially notes that (TP) ellipsis repairs an island violation, as can be found in (6).

(6) John wants to hire someone who fixes cars with something, but I don’t know [CP  what1 [TP John wants to hire someone who fixes cars with t1]].

Though the wh-phrase remnant in the embedded interrogative clause of the second conjunct in (6) has moved out of the island-forming relative clause, the sentence in (6) where the TP after the remnant undergoes ellipsis or Sluicing does not exhibit island effects due to a Subjacency violation, manifesting so-called repair-by-ellipsis effects.

Extending the PF deletion analysis of Sluicing to fragments, Merchant (2004) notes that unlike Sluicing, Fragmenting (i.e., the operation of eliding a clause that a fragment remnant moves out of) does not amnesty an island violation in the case of corrective ‘fragments’, as in (7):

(7) A: Does John want to hire someone who fixes cars with a HAMMER?

B: *No, [FP a MONKEY-WRENCH1 [CP  [TP John wants to hire someone who fixes cars with t1]]].

Merchant proposes to account for the contrast between Sluicing and Fragmenting, relying on two ideas: (i) Sluicing is an operation of TP deletion, whereas Fragmenting is an operation of deleting the larger CP; (ii) An island violation is derivationally recorded on a moving element rather than on a node that an illegally moving element crosses. Using these two ideas, the culprit for the unacceptability of (7B) in contrast to the acceptability of (6) is that the former contains the island violation-recording trace in the CP domain just outside the elided TP, but the latter has the island violation-recording trace included in the elided/slucied TP, thus the trace not counting as an illegitimate object at PF.

Griffith and Lipták (2014), however, first note that there is an instance of Fragmenting where an island violation is repaired by ellipsis, as in (8B).

(8) A: Does Abby speak the same Balkan language that someone in your syntax class speaks?

B: Yeah, [FP Charlie1 [TP  speak the same Balkan language that someone in your syntax class speaks t1 ]]

Griffith and Lipták thus argue that not the distinction between Sluicing and Fragmenting, but the distinction between contrastive and non-contrastive (or informational) focus marked remnants is critical in determining whether such remnants are island-sensitive or not. Specifically in (6) and (8), the remnant surviving after Sluicing or Fragmenting is legal because receiving non-contrastive/informational focus, both the remnant and its correlate take scope freely, being insensitive to an island. In (7), by contrast, the remnant in Fragmenting is illegal because while receiving contrastive focus, both the remnant and its correlate are subject to island constraints (cf. Meinunger (1995)).

Merchant (2008: 148) notes that the contrastive focus marked remnants in Sluicing also show island effects, as in (ia-b):

(i) a. *Abby wants to hire someone who speaks GREEK, but I don’t remember [what OTHER languages]1 [she wants to hire someone who speaks t].

b. *The radio played a song that RINGO wrote, but I don’t know [who else]1 [the radio played a song that t wrote].

3.2 Barros et al. (2013) and Weir (2014)

Unlike Merchant (2004) and Griffith and Lipták (2014), both Barros et al. (2013) and Weir (2014) note that contrastive focus marked fragments are not always island sensitive. Roughly speaking, as in (9aB) the corrective ‘fragment’ corresponding to its correlate in object position is not island sensitive, but as in (9bB) the corrective ‘fragment’ corresponding to its correlate in subject position is island sensitive:

(9) a. A: Did Abby claim she speaks ↗ [GREEK] fluently?

Merchant (2004) notes that a polar question can be construed as an implicit constituent question if the constituent being questioned carries a rising intonation, as (9aA) and other examples below in the text show.

B: No, Albanian [she claimed she speaks t fluently]

b. A: Does Abby speak the same Balkan language that ↗ [BEN] speaks?

B: *No, Charlie [she speaks the same Balkan language that t speaks]

(Weir 2014, 200)

Weir (2014, 203) adds the following two pairs of examples, where contrastive focus marked corrective ‘fragments’ that have their correlates in object or as part of object position are immune to island effects:

(10) a. A: Do they grant scholarships to students that study ↗ [SPANISH]?

B: No, French. (relative clause)

b. A: Do you take milk and ↗ [HONEY] in your tea?

B: No, sugar. (coordinate structure)     (Weir 2014, 203)

To understand the use of corrective ‘fragments’, we replicate Ginzburg and Sag’s (2000) discussion of them. They also report corrective ‘fragments’ licensed by contrastive focus creating an implicit question (p. 301, fn. 10):

(11) A: Does Bo know ↗ BRENDAN?

(presupposes QUD: Who does Bo know?)

B: No, Frank she knows.      (Ginzburg and Sag 2000, 301)

The antecedent utterance in (11) can be understood as raising an implicit question, roughly ‘who does Bo know?’. Such an implicit question in discourse is often discussed under the rubric of the Question under Discussion or QUD (Roberts 2012/1996). In (11), the corrective ‘fragment’ in (11B) counts as an answer to the object constituent implicitly questioned. In addition, the subject constituent in focus licenses a corrective ‘fragment’, as in (12B).

(12) A:  ↗ JOHN has the key to the liquor cabinet.

(presupposes QUD: Who has the key to the liquor cabinet?)

B: No, Mary has the key to the liquor cabinet.

(Weir 2014, 73)

When the embedded subject receives contrastive focus, the elided clause in deriving a corrective ‘fragment’ can be either the matrix clause of the antecedent, as in (13a), or the embedded clause, as in (13b).

As Weir (2014) and Barros (2012) note, unlike in a sentence such as (13) where focus material in an embedded clause licenses the fragment either with the ‘matrix’ or  the ‘embedded’ reading, given a constituent question where a wh-word has moved from an embedded position to a matrix position, fragments as in (iB) and (iiB) below can only ‘answer’ the matrix clause.

(i) A: Who did John say has the key to the liquor cabinet?

B: Mary.           Weir (2014, 53)

(ii) A: Who does Jack think Sally hates?

B: Christine.     Barros et al. (2012, 2)

(13) John said that ↗ BILL has the key to the liquor cabinet.

a. No, Mary. You reported that wrong: John said MARY has the key.

b. No, Mary. I don’t know what John said, but you should know that it’s actually MARY that has the key.

More explicitly, the corrective ‘fragments’ in (13a) and (13b) are derived from the underlying clausal sources in (14a) and (14b), respectively.

(14) a. Mary [John said that t has the key to the liquor cabinet]

b. Mary [t has the key to the liquor cabinet]

(Weir 2014, 53-54)

Returning to (9bB), which is similar to the one originally adduced by Merchant (2004), Barros (2012) argues that ellipsis cannot repair islands:

(15) A: Does Abby speak the same Balkan language that ↗ BEN speaks?

a. B: *No, Charlie.

b. B: *No, it’s Charlie.

c. B: *No, Charlie speaks it.

d. B: *Charlie, Abby speaks the same Balkan language (that) t speaks.     (Weir 2014, 206-7)

Barros (2012) argues that the ellipsis in (15a) is unacceptable because the putative ‘short sources’ in (15b) and (15c) are infelicitous, and the ‘long source’ in (15d) involves an island violation. If island violations were ameliorated by ellipsis, the unacceptability of (15a) would not be expected.

Weir (2014, 207) argues that in (15A), even with the rising intonation placed on Ben, the most salient reading is one in which the speaker is interested in “which languages Abby speaks”. It is odd to construe (15A) as a question about “which pairs of people speak the same language”. In other words, given (15A), the QUD concerns “the languages that Abby speaks”, rather than “who Abby speaks the same language as”. However,  Weir (2014, 208-9) notes that if such an enriched context as in (16) is provided to specify that the QUD is about “pairs of people that speak the same language”, rather than “just which languages Abby speaks”, then the island-violating corrective ‘fragment’ answer in (16B) improves in acceptability:

(16) Context: We have before us lots of people. We know that these people are made up of lots of pairs of people who speak the same language as each other and who do not speak the same language as anyone else. (I.e. John and Mary both speak English and nothing else, Jan and Peter both speak Dutch and nothing else, etc.) A and B are playing a game where A is trying to guess which people belong to which pair. A’s just trying to guess the right pairings, though; the actual languages they speak is irrelevant to him, all that’s relevant is that the people in the pair speak the same language. B knows the pairings and will answer A’s questions. A had already worked out that Abby and Charlie were a pair a while ago, but had forgotten this. (Weir 2014, 208-9)

A: Does Abby speak the same Balkan language that ↗ [Ben] speaks?

B: No, Charlie Abby speaks the same Balkan language that t speaks. (You’d already worked that pairing out, remember?)

Weir (2014) adds that given the context in (16), ‘short sources’ answers as in (17) still do not seem very good:

(17) a. ??No, it’s Charlie.

b. ??No, Charlie speaks it.

Weir (2014) tries to explain the improvement of the corrective ‘fragment’ in (16B), given the context in (16), but he is short of explicating the usual acceptability of the corrective ‘fragments’ in (9aB) and (10aB) & (10bB), where as noted above, their correlates are in object or as part of object position.

Meanwhile, Barros et al. (2013) take up the same issue of corrective ‘fragments’ and their island (in)sensitivity. They first re-characterize the island (in)sensitivity of corrective ‘fragments’, particularly noting the distinction between relative and because clauses in terms of hosting the correlates of corrective ‘fragments’, as in (18) and (19):

(18) Relative clause islands:

a. A: Did they hire someone who works on  ↗ [French] (last year)?

B: No, (they work on) German.

b. A: Does Abby speak the same Balkan language that  ↗ [Ben] speaks?

B: *No, Charlie (speaks it).

(19) Because islands:

a. A: Did they leave because you offended  ↗ [Mary]?

B: No, ?(??I offended) Sarah.

b. A: Did Ben leave the party because ↗ [Abby] wouldn’t dance?

B: No, Sally *(??wouldn’t dance with him).

Barros et al. (2013) argue that as for the relative clauses in (18), the object corrective ‘fragment’ is derived from the overt short source, but the subject corrective ‘fragment’ cannot be because of the absence of the overt short source. However, the facts are not so clean with adjunct because islands. In (19aB), the corrective ‘fragment’ is better than the overt short source, whereas in (19bB), the corrective ‘fragment’ is worse than the short source. In both cases, the short source is not terrible, but definitely degraded (intuitively, it describes speaker A’s question indirectly at best).

Barros et al. (2013) does not address why there is an asymmetry between subject and object correlates in allowing a short source for the corrective ‘fragment’ in relative and because clauses. But Barros et al. (2013) accounts for the rather acceptable status of (19aB) [in contrast to the unacceptable status of (19bB)], although it lacks a short source. They propose that it is derived from the following underlying structure:

(20) [CP Sarah2 [ because you offended t2 ]]1 [TP They left t1 ].

The gist of their idea is that the corrective ‘fragment’ in because clause moves to the edge of the clause, which is also extracted out of TP ellipsis and subsequently feeds into ellipsis. However, this option is not available to (19bB), whose derivation is represented in (21):

(21) *[Sally2 [CP because t2 wouldn’t dance]]1 [TP Ben left the party t1].

Barros et al. (2013) attribute the ill-formedness of (21) (i.e., (19bB)) to a violation of the that-trace constraint.

However, it is questionable whether a violation of the that-trace constraint cannot be repaired by ellipsis. See Merchant (2001, 2008) for the contrary claim that such a violation can be nullified by ellipsis. In addition, even when the correlate of the corrective ‘fragment’ occurs as an embedded subject without the complementizer that inside the because clause, the corrective ‘fragment’ as in (22B) is still unacceptable, as noted by Matthew Barros (perl. comm.):

(22) A: Did Ben leave the party because someone said ↗ [Abby] wouldn’t dance?

B: *No, Sally.

Suppose that we derive the corrective ‘fragment’ in (22B), as represented in (23). We cannot resort to the that-trace constraint for the ill-formedness of the corrective ‘fragment’ in (22B).

(23) *[Sally2 [CP because someone said t2 wouldn’t dance]]1 [TP someone said Ben left the party t1].

To summarize, it is in need to answer why there is a distinction between subject and object corrective ‘fragments’ in both relative and because clauses.

4. Towards an explanation: The syntax of correction

The corrective ‘fragments’ we have seen in the previous section occur immediately after the negative polarity particle (NPP) no, as a response to the yes-no question or declarative sentence. The following two examples repeated from (11) and (12) are representative cases:

(11) A: Does Bo know BRENDAN?

B: No,  Frank.                 (Ginzburg & Sag 2000, 301)

(12) A: JOHN has the key to the liquor cabinet.

(presupposes QUD: Who has the key to the liquor cabinet?)

B: No, Mary has the key to the liquor cabinet.

(Weir 2014, 73)

Departing from the previous works such as Merchant (2004) and Griffith and Lipták (2014) Barros et al. (2013) and Weir (2014), we argue that the NPP is a clausal anaphora. In other words, following Kramer and Rawlins (2009), Chung (2014), Park (2015), and Holmberg (2015), we analyze the NPP as also derived from a clausal source by Fragmenting. Specifically, (11B) and (12b) are derived from the more detailed structures as represented below:

(11B) No, Bo doesn’t know BRENDAN, Frank she knows.

(12B) No, JOHN does not have the key to the liquor cabinet, Mary has the key to the liquor cabinet.

In these fully represented structures, we can see that the first conjunct clause involves Fragmenting of the shaded portion while leaving behind on single sentential remnant NPP, and the second conjunct clause (which occurs after the comma sign as an asyndetic coordinator) involves a run-of-the-mill kind of Stripping.

Note that the sentential structure of (11B) and (12B) is analogous to the structure involving what McCawley (1991) calls contrastive negation. The latter is exemplified below:

(24) John didn’t drink coffee, he drank tea.

McCawley (1991: 190)

Apparently the difference between the sentential structure of (11B) and (12B) and that of (24) is that in the former, the NPP occurs as a response to the preceding yes-no question or declarative sentence.

Concentrating on the application of Stripping to the second conjunct clause in the sentences like (11B) and (12B), it is known that the remnant surviving after Stripping need not be clause-bounded. In the typical examples involving Stripping such as (22a-c), taken from Merchant (2004b: 4), the remnant is extracted from the embedded clause to the periphery of the matrix clause prior to Stripping:

(22) Jack regretted that Abby got to go,

a. and Ben [Jack regretted that t got to go]/Ben [t got to go], too.

b. AND Ben [Jack regretted that t got to go]/Ben [t got to go].

c. but not Ben [Jack regretted that t got to go]/Ben [t got to go].

In addition, the coordinating conjunction may relate to the embedded TP rather than the matrix TP. In that case, the remnant is extracted to the periphery of the embedded TP that is going to undergo Stripping :

Likewise, the corrective subject ‘fragment’ can be extracted from either the matrix or the embedded TP to be stripped, as in the following example repeated from (13):

(13) John said that BILL has the key to the liquor cabinet.

a. No, Mary [John said that t has the key to the liquor cabinet].

b. No, Mary [BILL has the key to the liquor cabinet].

However, unlike the corrective ‘fragments’ extracted from non-island structures, the ones extracted from island structures are generally ruled out, as noted by Merchant (2004) and Griffith and Lipták (2014). But we argue that they may take the marked option, being derived inside such island structures via sub-clausal coordination. Before elaborating on the marked option taken by the corrective ‘fragments’ extracted from island structures, we show that the distribution of the corrective ‘fragment’ inside island structure is remarkably akin to that of the corrective ‘fragment’ in what McCawley (1991) calls contrastive negation, what Vicente (2010) calls adversative coordination, or what Toosarvandani (2013) calls corrective but. The representative examples of the latter construction are as follows:

(25) a. John didn’t put gin in the punch(,) but vodka.

b. John put not gin in the punch(,) but vodka.

What Toosarvandani (2013) calls corrective but in (25a) involves sentential negation, and that in (25b), constituent negation. Toosarvandani (2013) argues that the former type (which McCawley (1991) labels as anchored form of contrastive negation) has the post-but remnant derived from a clausal source, whereas the latter type (which McCawley (1991) labels as basic form of contrastive negation) employs sub-clausal coordination

Toosarvandani (2013, 7) notes that what McCawley (1991) calls the anchored form of contrastive negation is island sensitive, as follows:

(26) a. * Alfonse didn’t cook rice and beans, but potatoes. (= ... but Alfonse cooked [rice and potatoes].)

b. * That Alfonse ate the rice isn’t fantastic, but the beans. (= ... but [that Alfonse ate the beans] is fantastic.)

c. * Alfonse didn’t smash the vase that Sonya had brought from China, but from Japan. (= ... but Alfonse smashed [the vase that Sonya had brought from Japan].)

d. * Jasper didn’t choke when he saw Sally, but John. (= ... but Jasper choked [when he saw John].)

Vicente (2010) reports in his footnote 18 that there are speakers who do not find any island violations in the examples similar to those in (26).

Toosarvandani (2013, 8) goes on to note that what McCawley (1991) calls the basic form of contrastive negation, by contrast, does not show island effects, as follows.

(27) a. Alfonse cooked rice and not beans but potatoes.

b. That Alfonse ate not the rice but the beans is fantastic.

c. Alfonse smashed the vase that Sonya had brought not from China but from Japan.

d. Jasper choked when he saw not Sally but John.

The island insensitivity of this type of contrastive negation follows naturally from Toosarvandani’s (2013) analysis of this type as involving sub-clausal coordination. Since the remnant after the coordinator but in (27a-d) is not derived from a clausal source, there is no point in inviting an island violation.

Two more aspects of corrective but are worth mentioning. One is that corrective but with constituent negation may involve discontinuous coordination, as follows (the examples in (28) are taken from Toosarvandani (2013, 31)):

(28) a. He invited not Mary to the party, but Lucy.
b. He sent not just Mary to London, but the whole team.
c. He argued with not Mary about finances, but Lucy.
d. They revealed not the answers to the students, but the questions.
e. Someone left not a letter for us, but a postcard.
f. This pissed not Bill off, but Sue.
g. He gulped not one down, but five!
h. They detained not Bill for his indiscretions, but Mary.
i. They reengineered not the scissors for their flaw, but the paper handler.
j. They sent not the child to its room, but the older girl.

In these examples, the remnant after but is not adjacent to its correlate before it. Toosarvandani (2013, 31) suggests that the conjunction but in (28) may conjoin together not just two DP’s/PP’s but the two larger containing constituents like v/VP’s. In other words, the second conjunct in (28) is bigger than what you see at surface form, namely v/VP that undergoes ellipsis after the extraction of the remnant.

The second distinct feature of corrective but either with sentential or with constituent negation is that subject remnants are always impossible with corrective but:

(30) a. * Max doesn’t eat chard, but Sam.

Intended: ‘Max does not eat chard; and, Sam eats chard.’

b. ?? Not Max eats chard, but Sam.

Intended: ‘Max does not eat chard; and, Sam eats chard.’

Regardless of whether the negative element is sentence negation, as in (30a), or constituent negation, as in (30b), the remnant of ellipsis cannot be a subject. We attribute the impossibility of subject remnants with corrective but to the fact that the two vP’s containing vP-internal subjects cannot be conjoined together by the conjunction but.

Note that there is an asymmetry between and and but in terms of Gapping involving the subject remnant, as follows:

(i) Ann didn’t buy the figs, and [Nick] [the pears].

(ii) *Ann didn’t buy the figs, but [Nick] [the pears].

from Steindl (2013, 1)

Note that it is not the case that two remnants with the conjunction but are always disallowed, as in (iv):

(iii) Sam often brings an apple for the teacher, and [a browny] [for the principle].

(iv) Sam didn’t bring an apple for the teacher, but [a browny] [for the principle].

Now returning to the corrective ‘fragments’ extracted from island structures, they may take the marked option, in the same mode of deriving the ‘remnant’ after corrective but. More specifically, the corrective ‘fragments’ taking the marked option are derived from the second non-clausal conjunct XP that is conjoined with the preceding first non-clausal conjunct XP by the coordinating comma sign (,) (cf. Potts (2005); de Vries (2002, 2006)). In this conception, (18aB) and (19aB) repeated below are derived in the following manner:

(18) Relative clause islands:

a. A: Did they hire someone who works on ↗ [French] (last year)?

B: No, [they didn’t hire someone who [VP works on French (last year)]], [German1 (VP work on t (last year))].

(19) Because islands:

a. A: Did they leave because you offended ↗ [Mary]?

B: No, they didn’t leave because you offended [DP Mary], {?[Sarah], ??[Sarah1 (VP  offend t1)]}.

The coordinating comma sign in (18aB) assuredly involves discontinuous coordination as the presence of the adverbial last year in this sentence disallows simple DP coordination. In other words, it conjoins together not two DP’s but two VP’s, and Stripping applies to the second conjunct VP leaving behind the corrective ‘fragment’, German. The coordinating comma sign in (19aB), on the other hand, may involve the coordination of both two DP’s and two VP’s. The first option is available because no adverbial intervenes between the corrective ‘fragment’ Sarah and its correlate Mary. The second option allows the corrective ‘fragment’ to move out of the second VP prior to ellipsis.

Recall that Barros et al. (2013) note the slight difference in acceptability between (18aB) and (19aB), which both involve object remnants that are extracted from the VP structure. We conjecture that this difference is ascribed to the asymmetry between relative and because clauses in terms of ‘association with focus’ between the negation and the correlate of the remnant. The subordinator because disrupts this association.

However, (18bB) and (19bB) where the corrective ‘fragment’ corresponds to its correlate in subject position are ruled out because the discontinuous coordination with the corrective comma sign does not allow a coordination of the two vP’s containing vP-internal subjects. In this regard, the corrective comma sign behaves in the identical fashion to the corrective but shown in (30a) and (30b).

(18) Relative clause islands:

b. A: Does Abby speak the same Balkan language that  ↗ [Ben] speaks?

B: No, [Abby doesn’t speak the same Balkan language that Ben speaks], *[vP Charlie1 [t speaks it]].

(19) Because islands:

b. A: Did Ben leave the party because ↗ [Abby] wouldn’t dance?

B: No, Ben left the party because Abby wouldn’t dance, */??[vP Sally1 [t wouldn’t dance with him]].

Thus, the corrective ‘fragments’ corresponding to their correlates in subject position inside islands turn out to be ill-formed both because the Stripping option is not available owing to an island violation they induce when they move out of ellipsis, and because the sub-clausal coordination option is not available, either, owing to the corrective comma sign that cannot conjoin together two vPs. Note that since the second conjunct is neither VP nor vP, what Barros et al. (2013) call the short source for the subject remnant in (18bB) or (19bB) is not available, as predicted.

The short source here refers to the vP/VP structure, which corresponds to Barros et al.’s (2013) simple clause structure.

5. Conclusion

We first showed that the corrective ‘fragment’ construction is generated as consisting of two full clauses conjoined together by the comma sign as an asyndetic coordinating conjunction. Thus the underlying structure of the corrective ‘fragment’ is assimilated to what McCawley (1991) calls contrastive negation. We then argued that the surface fragmentary negative polarity particle is derived from an underlying clausal structure via Fragmenting (the operation of eliding a clause, leaving behind one constituent from it), thus being a clausal anaphora. We also showed that there are two ways of deriving corrective ‘fragments’. When they are derived from non-island clausal structure, they are derived from a clausal structure via the usual type of Stripping (i.e. TP ellipsis). In contrast, when they are apparently derived from island structure, they in fact do not involve extraction out of it. Rather, being inside island structure, they involve sub-clausal coordination with their corresponding conjuncts before the comma sign. Specifically, in sub-clausal coordination, the second conjunct may or may not feed into sub-clausal Stripping. All in all, the syntax of corrective ‘fragments’ follows from the pivotal thesis that the comma sign is an asyndetic coordinating conjunction that provides a context for either clausal coordination or sub-clausal coordination where Stripping may or may not apply.

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Myung-Kwan Park

Dongguk University

30, Pildong-ro 1-gil, Jung-gu

Seoul 04620, Korea

Phone: +82-2-2260-3153

e-mail: parkmk@dongguk.edu

Received on January 10, 2017

Revised version received on March 22, 2017

Accepted on March 31, 2017