Winfried Lechner

Ellipsis in comparatives

The present monograph defends a new, semantically transparent account of the comparative construction, which incorporates novel analyses of various phenomena related to the complex interdependencies between word-order, ellipsis and interpretation. In particular, the study discusses the implications of two central hypotheses: (i) Comparative Deletion and Comparative Ellipsis do not represent construction specific operations, but can be subsumed under standardly sanctioned movement and deletion processes. (ii) Phrasal comparatives are not-base-generated, but derive from a clausal source.

Reduced And Phrasal Comparatives

In this paper, I defend two hypotheses as to the derivation of phonologically reduced comparative constructions. On the one hand, I present evidence which supports an ellipsis analysis of phrasal comparatives over base-generation approaches. On the other hand, it is argued that the restrictions on deletion in comparatives are exhaustively determined by the principles governing Gapping, Right Node Raising and Across-The-Board movement in coordinate structures. It follows that construction specific reduction operations such as Comparative Ellipsis can be dispensed with. Evidence for these two hypotheses comes from generalizations about the surface shape of the comparative complement and its positional distribution inside the matrix clause. As for the reason why comparatives, which manifest instances of semantic subordination, can be targeted by processes widely held to be restricted to coordinate structures, it is proposed that optional extraposition of the comparative complement establishes a derived comparative coordination, which emulates the syntax of base-generated conjunctions. The results of this study furthermore indicate that (i) comparatives need to satisfy a hitherto unidentified condition which limits possible relations between the head of an empty operator movement construction and the operator, and that (ii) the Coordinate Structure Constraint has to be formulated as a genuinely syntactic restriction.

TWO KINDS OF RECONSTRUCTION

This essay addresses various issues concerning noun phrase interpretation in German. It is argued that the concept of Semantic Reconstruction (Cresti 1995, Rullmann 1995) can be fruitfully employed in the derivation of quantifier scope ambiguities in German. Semantic Reconstruction will be demonstrated to be an independently needed strategy of grammar, that is not parasitic on syntactic reconstruction as expressed by Copy Theory (Chomsky 1992). The basic difference between Semantic Reconstruction and syntactic reconstruction will be traced back to their asymmetric availability in scrambling chains: scrambling can be undone only by Semantic Reconstruction.

A Puzzle for Remnant Movement Analyses of Verb-Second

A Puzzle for Remnant Movement Analyses of Verb-Second Winfried Lechner University of Athens In this squib, I address some implications of an unspectacular yet critical consequence of remnant movement (RM) approaches toward verb movement (in particular, verb-second (V2)) indicating that it is hard for these analyses to express elementary generalizations about the relation between word order and interpretation.