Towards a Theory of Radical Island Evasion Under Ellipsis Patrick D Elliott [email protected] Syntax and Semantics Research Group, University of Edinburgh This talk will address the phenomenon of island repair under ellipsis (Ross (1969)). (1) is an example of sluicing - an elliptical construction involving a wh-remnant and an indefinite correlate: (1)

They want to hire someone who speaks a Balkan language, but we don’t know which one they want to hire someone who speaks . (e-site according to Lasnik (2001))

The putative e-site is ungrammatical: *Which one do they want to hire someone who speaks?. This is because the relative clause is an island (Ross, 1967). Lasnik (2001) claims that the remnant and correlate must be merged in parallel syntactic positions (syntactic isomorphism). It follows that the e-site must involve an island violation. The fact that (1) is grammatical is claimed to be down to an e-site specific repair mechanism. I shall explore evasion as an alternative to repair. Merchant (2001) argues for semantic identity - The e-site and its antecedent may differ structurally as long as they mean the same thing (roughly). This allows the short source in (2) to underlie the apparent repair in (1). (2)

...but we don’t know which one hee−type should speak.

Merchant (2001) nonetheless claims that some islands are genuinely repairable. I will argue however for radical evasion; No e-site specific repair mechanisms, but rather an inventory of evasion strategies. In this talk, I will focus on the Left Branch Condition (LBC) (Corver (1990)). Merchant (2001) amongst others claim that LBC violations are repairable based on data such as (3). (3)

Mary married a tall man, but i don’t know how tall Mary married a man. (Merchant’s (2001) analysis)

I will argue that LBC violations are evaded using a predicational source, i.e. ...but i don’t know how tall he is. Evidence will be given from non-predicative adjectival remnants (Elliott, 2012) and unconditional sluices (Rawlins, 2008). I will also touch on other proposed evasion strategies: Short sources, clefts and island pied-piping (Barros, Elliott & Thoms (2013)). Predicational sources fit into a broader research project which renders e-site specific mechanisms redundant - On this view, island repair under ellipsis is epiphenomenal. 1