The morphophonology of ellipsis: evidence for Segregated Transfer
Craig Sailor
May 2021 

This paper attempts to pinpoint the derivational timing of ellipsis by examining how it interacts with other phenomena whose timing is better understood. It is demonstrated that for morphophonological processes such as external sandhi and allomorphy, material adjacent to an ellipsis site cannot “see” ellipsis-internal material. Under the mainstream [E]-based approach to ellipsis, this result indicates that the silence characterizing ellipsis arises early at PF, consistent with non-application of Vocabulary Insertion (and inconsistent with phonological deletion). However, it would also follow straightforwardly if ellipsis sites were sent to the interfaces alone, the moment they are licensed in the syntax (Aelbrecht 2010). This approach, involving what I call the 'Segregated Transfer' of ellipsis sites, is pursued here: beyond the mounting syntactic evidence supporting it, it is shown to be preferable on post-syntactic grounds as well, requiring fewer assumptions to capture the novel findings presented here.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/006050 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	To appear in "The derivational timing of ellipsis", ed. Anikó Lipták and Güliz Günes. Oxford University Press.
keywords:	ellipsis, allomorphy, external sandhi, transfer, bleeding effects, post-syntactic operations, morphology, syntax, phonology
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