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There is something missing in NP and moving in DP

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Abstract

This study investigates a curious Adjective-Prepositional Phrase sequence (the A-PP string) found in coordination contexts. Investigations into the distribution of this A-PP string reveal that the A-PP string is possible only in coordination contexts and is restricted to cases where N undergoes across-the-board (ATB) movement. We point out that the distribution of the A-PP string is similar to that of Gapping observed in the verbal domain. Thus, we argue that the A-PP string is an instance of Gapping in the nominal domain, and that Gapping-like strings can be produced by an ATB-movement derivation. Based on this data from the nominal domain, we make an argument supporting the ATB-movement derivation of Gapping broadly. Furthermore, this study sheds new light on the nature of N-movement within DP in English. Previous studies have argued against N-movement in English. We demonstrate that the distribution of the A-PP string depends on the availability of ATB-N-movement. In other words, if N-movement is not available in English, we cannot capture the properties of the A-PP string. Thus, this study makes a new argument for N-movement within DP in English based on the distribution of the A-PP string.

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Notes

  1. Throughout this paper, we employ flat three-branching structure for coordinate structures. In terms of the analysis of coordinate structures, we do not offer any new analysis and the structure of coordination is not crucial to the central A-PP derivation. Therefore, for the sake of simplicity, we adopt the flat three-branching structure.

  2. In this study, we use Gapping as the name of a construction or a string in which the head of a phrase is missing and two elements in the phrase are remaining. Gapping as used in this paper does not invoke a specific derivation or rule, but merely describes the shape of a construction or string.

  3. There exist additional cases involving the nouns time, place and where which we also consider to be light nouns. In our examples we stick to cases involving one, body and thing though we have no reason to suspect that these other light nouns behave differently.

  4. The same anonymous reviewer also pointed out that superlatives, which can come high in DP, cannot come between D and the light noun as in (i).

    1. (i)
      1. a.

        The best three pictures

      2. b.

        The smallest several drips

      3. c.

        *I interviewed some best one old from New York.

      4. d.

        *I saw every smallest thing new in Chicago.

    However, we think that the unacceptability of (ic-d) could be due to the absence of the definite article the which superlatives normally require, and thus focus on the ordinal example.

  5. The NLLT editor points out one such potential set of N movement structures:

    1. (i)
      1. a.

        The fear1 of every professor2 t1 of his2 student

      2. b.

        The fear1 of every professor2 t1 of his2 student and of every dean3 t1 of his3 secretary.

    The examples in (i) and other relevant examples reported in Adger (2003) could indeed be another instance of N movement derived Gapping, though we leave the detailed analysis for future work.

  6. One of the anonymous reviewers suggested that the N-movement derivation predicts that the N-stranding NP-ellipsis reported in Lipták and Saab (2014) should be possible in the A-PP string context. Lipták and Saab (2014) suggested that in the second clause in (i) someone can be interpreted as someone experienced as in (ib).

    1. (i)

      To fill this job opening, Bill is looking for someone experienced. I am also looking for someone.

      1. a.

        I am looking for someone, irrespective of his experience.

      2. b.

        I am looking for someone experienced.

    They argue that this interpretation is possible if the second clause involves the structure of NP-ellipsis in which the indefinite NP someone or the light N one escaped from the elided NP.

    1. (ii)

      I am looking for [someone]

    In a similar way, the following should be possible in the A-PP context.

    1. (iii)

      To make this flat, you need to put something heavy on this side. I’ll place something (on that side), too.

      1. a.

        I’ll place something on this side/something on that side irrespective of weight.

      2. b.

        I’ll place something heave on this side/ something heavy on that side.

      3. c.

        I’ll place [something] / [PP on that sie].

    We agree with the reviewer that if the interpretation (iiib) is possible, this paradigm could provide support for the N-movement analysis, and furthermore the idea that N-movement can interact with NP-ellipsis (Lipták and Saab 2014). We interviewed 7 native speakers of English about the examples in (i) and (iii), and we could find only two speakers who could achieve the interpretation (ib) and (iiib). Thus, we observe that someone who accepts (ib) also accepts (iiib). However, it is not clear to us how robust this judgement is. Even those two speakers reported to us the interpretation (ia) is “not easy” or “maybe possible.” We thank the reviewer for leading our attention to this paradigm and we agree with the reviewer’s assessment, though the difficulty of judgement suggests a need for further verification.

  7. It is further pointed out by Kishimoto (2000) that plural forms do not appear to trigger light noun movement.

  8. This argument extends to the idea that PP is also not obligatory, though we do not demonstrate these examples fully for the sake of brevity. In this way the derivation is compatible with including adjectives, PPs or both.

  9. These examples benefit from a cautious reading where one is careful to exclude the free-choice interpretation of any and the specific interpretation of some, which are thought to behave differently with respect to polarity distribution.

  10. Bruening (2015) suggests in contrast to other proposals on non-constituent coordination that the apparent constituents of interest are prosodic rather than syntactic. While a relevant analysis for other cases of apparent non-constituent coordination, the A-PP string fails to meet two criteria for Bruening’s proposal. First, there is no contrastive prosody in the examples we have examined, while Bruening’s examples all require such prosody on the head of the apparent non-constituent. Second, Bruening’s examples involve the deletion of all the non-head elements of the coordination. This is nearly the opposite of our observed distribution where it appears that it is the noun head that is unpronounced.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the reviewers and editors at NLLT for their careful review and helpful feedback in the preparation of this work. We also thank Brian Agbayani, Tomohiro Fujii, Ángel Gallego, Kyle Johnson, Howard Lasnik, Hajime Ono, Mamoru Saito, Koji Sugisaki, Kensuke Takita, Hidekazu Tanaka, and the members of the SSS-Lab at Northwestern University for their valuable comments and suggestions for earlier versions of this work.

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2216989 - Doctoral Dissertation Research: Active assignment of quantifier scope guides language processing.

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  1. Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University, 2016 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA

    Wesley Orth & Masaya Yoshida

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  1. Wesley Orth
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Orth, W., Yoshida, M. There is something missing in NP and moving in DP. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 41, 1509–1527 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-023-09581-6

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