Multiple Sluicing in English

  • Published : 2007.11.01

Abstract

This paper explores the nature of multiple sluicing in English, which has two or more remnant wh-phrases in clause edge position. At the beginning part of the paper we argue against Nishigauchi's (1998) and Lasnik's (2007) Gapping analysis of multiple sluicing, which says that two remnant wh-phrases each actually occupies the left and right edge of a clause, with the in-between string of words undergoing Gapping. We rather argue that multiple sluicing in English is the same kind as found in Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian. In other words, multiple sluicing in English is also derived by multiple wh-fronting which otherwise does not apply. We demonstrate that some important properties of the construction noted by Lmultiple sluicing, multiple wh-movement/fronting, sluicing, TP/IP-deletion, asnik (2007) under the Gapping approach to it can be accounted for in a principled way by our proposed analysis.

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