‘Why not’ and Other Patterns of Negative Why-stripping

• Marian Alves-Castro ^[1]
  1. [1] UPV/EHU
• Localización: Thresholds and Ways Forward in English Studies / coord. por María Lourdes López Ropero, Sara Prieto García-Cañedo, José Antonio Sánchez Fajardo, 2020, ISBN 978-84-1302-079-2, págs. 168-178
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This paper deals with a construction, why-not-stripping, which is to a large extent absent from the ellipsis literature. Two aspects of the construction constitute the focus of the discussion: (i) the feasibility of an analysis in terms of focus fronting of the remnant to the C-domain, followed by TP-ellipsis (Merchant 2001), and (ii) the status of negation.

    It will be shown that a variety of constituents may survive ellipsis and that, in some cases, movement should be banned, either because it takes place out of island contexts or because it affects sub-constituents. Despite this, the movement and ellipsis account will be shown to still be viable. Concerning negation, the discussion focuses on the nature of the negative marker, specifically on whether it instantiates constituent or sentence negation. The data, in this case, suggest that the negative marker is sentential, related to focus and base-generated in the C-domain