Dutch preposition stranding and ellipsis: ‘Merchant’s Wrinkle’ ironed out

This paper provides an explanation for the unexpected ban on preposition stranding by wh-R-pronouns under sluicing in Dutch. After showing that previous prosodic and syntactic explanations are untenable, we propose that the observed ban is a by-product of an EPP condition that applies in the PP domain in Dutch. Our analysis revolves around the idea that ellipsis bleeds EPP-driven movement, an idea that already has empirical support from independent patterns of ellipsis found in English and in other structural domains in Dutch. Our claim is that: (1) R-pronominalization involves a pronominal argument of P moving to the periphery of its extended PP domain (PlaceP) in order to satisfy a PP-internal EPP condition, (2) this EPP-driven movement is bled under sluicing, and (3) because SpecPlaceP is the ‘escape hatch’ through which R-pronouns must move in order to exit the PP domain to form preposition stranding configurations, bleeding the EPP-driven movement of R-pronouns to SpecPlaceP therefore precludes R-pronouns from undergoing the wh-movement required to form a sluicing configuration.


Introduction
Sluicing (Ross 1969) refers to the configuration in which all but the wh-phrase of an embedded wh-question appears to go 'missing' (1). The prevailing view in mainstream generative circles is that sluicing configurations are generated by clausal ellipsis, which renders unpronounced an otherwise full-fledged TP (2) (Ross 1969;Merchant 2001).
(1) John laughed at someone, but I don't know who.
(2) John laughed at someone, but I don't know [ CP who 1 [ TP he laughed at t 1 ]].
According to this analysis, the wh-phrase in sluicing undergoes A 0 -movement from a position within the ellipsis site. As a result, sluicing is predicted to be sensitive to the syntactic constraints on wh-movement in any given language L. Merchant (2001) demonstrates that this prediction is borne out for at least one constraint that varies across languages; namely, whether or not preposition stranding wh-movement is permitted in L. Merchant observes that languages that ordinarily permit preposition stranding whmovement (e.g., English, Frisian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic) also permit such movement under sluicing (see (1)), whereas language that ordinarily disallow preposition stranding wh-movement (e.g., Greek, Yiddish, Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Slovene, Persian, Catalan, French, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, Moroccan Arabic, and Basque) also disallow such movement under sluicing (3).
Greek (Merchant 2001, 94) with who she.spoke 'Who did she speak with?' P-stranding wh-movement b. * Pjon milise me? who she.spoke with Sluicing c. I Anna milise me kapjon, alla dhe ksero *(me) pjon? the Anna spoke with someone but not I.know with who 'Anna spoke with someone, but I don't know with who.' This observation is encapsulated in the preposition stranding generalization (Merchant 2001, 92): (4) A language L will allow preposition stranding under sluicing iff L allows preposition stranding under regular wh-movement.
Juan ha hablado con una chica pero no sé cuál. Juan has talked with a girl but not know which 'Juan talked with a girl, but I don't know which.' (Rodrigues et al. 2009, ex. 4) (6) a. * Whose 1 wishes did Terry get married [ PP against t 1 ]? b. Terry got married against someone's wishes, but I don't know whose (wishes). (Fortin 2007, ex. 405b and 407b) On closer inspection, one sees that these data do not constitute true exceptions to the preposition stranding generalization. The abovementioned studies have shown that, in each case, the elliptical clause is not syntactically isomorphic with its antecedent clause but is instead an underlying cleft or simple copular structure, in which no P-stranding occurs (7). 1 (7) a. Juan hablado con una chica pero no sé cuál [ es la chica con Juan spoke with a girl but not know which is the girl with la que ha hablado Juan]. the that has talked Juan 'Juan talked with a girl, but I don't know which (is the girl with whom he talked).' b. Terry got married against someone's wishes, but I don't know whose (wishes) [it was].
The opposite type of exception is found in Dutch (Merchant 2001, 95;Zwart 2011, 44;Hoeksema 2014;Kluck 2015). While Dutch wh-R-pronouns can strand their selecting prepositions under regular wh-movement, they cannot do this under sluicing. Kluck (2015) refers to this exception as 'Merchant's Wrinkle'. This contrast is shown in the examples in (8), in which the wh-R-pronoun is marked with a subscripted 'R'.
but I know not where he at looks 'but I don't know what he is looking at.' b. maar ik weet niet {waar / * waar R }.
but I know not where where i. * 'He is looking at something, but I don't know what he is looking at.' ii.
'He is looking at something, but I don't know where he is looking at something.' We have added the subscripted 'R' to the wh-R-pronoun to distinguish it from the 'true' locative wh-pronoun, with which the wh-R-pronoun is homophonous.
Although the wh-R-pronoun cannot appear as the sole remnant of sluicing, the true locative pronoun can, as (8b) shows. In this case, the 'sprouting-type' interpretation in (8bii) is obtained, as the locative pronoun is interpreted as an adjunct to VP in the elliptical clause. On this interpretation, no preposition stranding is involved. It should be mentioned that the same pattern is observed in German (Merchant 2001, 95), another language in which pronominal complements of certain prepositions are obligatorily realized as locative pronouns. Like in Dutch, wh-Rpronouns can also strand their preposition under regular wh-movement in certain varieties of German, yet they only have a locative interpretation when they appear as a 'bare' remnant of sluicing (9). 2 (9) He counted on something, … German a. aber ich weiß nicht wo R1 er [ PP mit t 1 ] gerechnet hat. but I know not where he with counted has 'but I don't know what he counted on.' b. aber ich weiß nicht {wo / * wo R }. but I know not where where i * 'He counted on something, but I don't know what he counted on.' ii.
'He counted on something, but I don't know where he counted on something.' The pattern exemplified in (8) and (9) completes the empirical picture for possible combinations of preposition stranding behavior under regular wh-movement and under sluicing, as Table 1 shows. This pattern is significant because the answer offered to explain its converse pattern (i.e., the third column in Table 1)-namely, that the preposition stranding under sluicing is only apparent, and therefore that the preposition stranding generalization is not violated-cannot apply here in the Dutch case, as preposition stranding should be no obstacle for sluicing, and therefore need not be circumvented. Consequently, a new and independent analysis of this pattern is required. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on this pattern and offer an analysis for it, via an extensive case study of Dutch. While we hope that our results will extend without much modification for German, we leave the suitability of our proposal for this language for future research.
The paper is structured as follows. In Sect. 2, we provide background information on preposition stranding in Dutch and its availability under sluicing, considering observations from the literature as well as the results of an acceptability judgment study we have carried out. In Sect. 3, we rule out appealing to prosody to explain 'Merchant's Wrinkle' by showing that, at least from a prosodic perspective, R-pronouns are licit remnants of sluicing. In Sect. 4, we first refute Kluck's (2015) syntactic explanation of 'Merchant's Wrinkle' before proposing our own account. Our analysis revolves around the idea that sluicing bleeds preposition stranding in Dutch.

Dutch R-pronouns
In this section, we first provide some background information on the form, distribution, and meaning of R-pronouns and related phenomena in Dutch, before elaborating on how R-pronominalization interacts with sluicing in Dutch. Because only the basic information needs to be conveyed for now, we gloss over many technical syntactic details in this section. A deeper and more technical picture of the Dutch locative PP is presented in Sect. 4, in which we outline our analysis.
2.1 Dutch PPs, R-pronouns, P-stranding, and P-pied-piping Dutch R-pronouns are non-human, pronominal complements of spatial prepositions that are realized as locative pronouns but display the syntactic hallmarks of nominal expressions. They are called R-pronouns because all Dutch locative pronouns contain the phoneme r (e.g., waar 'where', daar 'there', ergens 'somewhere', hier 'here') (van Riemsdijk 1978). In addition to being realized in a locative form, an R-pronoun must linearly precede its preposition (10). The prevailing view is that the observed 'R-pronoun [ P' word order arises from A 0 -movement of the R-pronoun. Thus, an R-pronoun necessarily strands its preposition. When stranding occurs PPinternally, the R-pronoun A 0 -moves to the specifier a functional projection within the PP domain (11) (Van Riemsdijk 1978;Koopman 2000;Den Dikken 2010; for alternative views, see Bennis and Hoekstra 1984;Müller 2000;Abels 2003;and Noonan 2017).  (12) and (13)], the R-pronoun escapes the PP via the specifier of the functional projection represented in (11), which is characterized as the 'escape hatch' from the PP domain by Koopman (2000) and Den Dikken (2010 In Dutch, PP-pied-piping involves A 0 -movement of the entire PP domain (Koopman 2000;Den Dikken 2010). This results in configurations such as (14) and (15)  It is important to stress that R-pronominalization, and therefore preposition stranding, is confined to inanimate pronominal complements of prepositions in Dutch. Animate pronouns and non-pronominal complements cannot strand their selecting prepositions: 3 (16) a. Naar wie kijkt hij? /* Wie kijkt hij naar? at who looks he who looks he at 'Who is he looking at?' b. Naar welk plaatje kijkt hij? /* Welk plaatje kijkt hij naar? at which picture looks he which picture looks he at 'Which picture is he looking at?' As mentioned in Sect. 1, despite being realized in a locative pronominal form, R-pronouns are nominal expressions, not prepositional phrases. In addition to the observation that R-pronouns are interpreted as binding the argument of a preposition (as already shown in many of the examples presented so far), support for this comes from licensing parasitic gaps: like standard A 0 -moved DPs, A 0 -moved R-pronouns can license parasitic gaps. Conversely, an A 0 -moved PP containing an R-pronoun cannot (17) (Zwart 2011, 217 Third, despite being met with disapproval by normative grammarians, R-pronouns with a human reference can occur as relative pronouns in colloquial speech (Broekhuis 2013): (ii) het meisje waar R Jan verliefd op is the girl where Jan in.love on is 'the girl who Jan is in love with' For the purposes of this paper, we must leave these exceptions aside.  (Zwart 2011, 217, ex. 7.245a, b) Another clear indication that R-pronouns and true locative pronouns are different comes from word order. Although an R-pronoun must obligatorily precede its selecting preposition (recall (10)), a true locative pronoun, if selected by a preposition, must follow it (18).
(18) De bus vertrekt van hier. the bus departs from here R-pronominalization therefore instantiates a form-function mismatch: although an R-pronoun has the morphological form of locative expression, it shows the syntactic and semantic hallmarks of a nominal.

Dutch R-pronouns and ellipsis
As already mentioned in Sect. 1, 'bare' R-pronouns in Dutch cannot be remnants of sluicing. The example in (8b) (repeated in (19b)), lacks the reading that is available in its non-elliptical counterpart in (14b). In other words, the wh-remnant in sluicing cannot refer to the complement of the elided preposition naar. 'He is looking at something, but I don't know where he is looking at something.' The availability of reading (ii) in (19b) indicates that the problem is not due to a general ban on wh-extraction of 'locative-looking' proforms under ellipsis. Nor is the problem due to a general ban on interpreting locative-looking proforms within remnants of sluicing as arguments: the example in (20) is acceptable and has the argumental interpretation in (19bi).
(20) Hij kijkt ergens naar, maar ik weet niet waar R naar. he looks somewhere at but I know not where.at 'He is looking at something, but I don't know what (he is looking at).' As Kluck (2015) points out, the ban on preposition stranding under sluicing extends to other types of elliptical constructions, including fragment questions (21), fragment answers (22) (Kluck 2015, ex.14) (24) Ik schrijf HIER R een boek over en jij DAAR R een essay *(over). I write this a book about and you that an essay about 'I'll write a book about this, and you an essay about that.' (Kluck 2015, ex.13) As these examples show, the argumental reading of the R-pronoun is unavailable without its selecting preposition, leading to the generalization in (25) (Kluck 2015).
(25) Dutch R-pronouns cannot strand a preposition in an ellipsis site.
In this paper we concern ourselves with the puzzle described in this section as formulated in (25). 4 Note that the generalization in (25) applies only to R-pronouns: it does not extend to remnants of sluicing that are non-pronominal, such as lexical DPs. It transpires that such phrases can appear as remnants of ellipsis with or without their selecting preposition, with identical acceptability, as the examples in (26) illustrate. Because lexical DPs cannot strand their selecting prepositions under regular wh-movement in Dutch (as already mentioned in the previous subsection), cases such as (26B') violate the preposition stranding generalization. This type of violation fits the description given in the third column in Table 1, and therefore instantiates the same type of violation reported in Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, and so on (see Sect. On the surface of it, these facts seem to resemble P-stranding under ellipsis, in that ellipsis disallows an otherwise attested extraction. Yet, the ungrammaticality can plausibly have different sources in the two cases. The was für/wat voor split is independently ruled out under ellipsis due to the no new words condition banning novel lexical material from the ellipsis site, originally stated in Chung (2005). Since the preposition voor 'for' in (ii) only occurs in the ellipsis site but not in the antecedent, it violates the no new words condition. In our cases of preposition stranding under sluicing, the stranded preposition in the ellipsis site is given, and thus does not violate no new words, suggesting that the ungrammaticality must be due to another reason.
Due to the fact that the wat voor/was für split is only attested with wh-movement and für/voor in the relevant meaning cannot form part of the antecedent, it is impossible to manufacture an example in which the stranded preposition in this construction is not new. Even though this state of affairs does not rule out the logical possibility that the was für/wat voor split should receive the same explanation as P-stranding under ellipsis, it makes a simple comparison with our cases impossible. For this reason, we do not extend our investigation to the was für/wat voor split in this paper. must be determined whether Dutch cases such as (26B') also involve an elliptical clause. The acceptability judgment task reported in the next subsection does precisely this.

The results of an acceptability judgment task
To test the validity of the generalization in (25), we carried out an online acceptability judgment task targeting sluicing and fragments, using native Dutchspeaking participants. This section describes the experiment and its results.
Method. The questionnaire was an ordinal response task on a 7-point Likert scale (1 for unacceptable, 7 for acceptable). Participants were asked to rate the acceptability of elliptical and non-elliptical clauses with R-pronoun extraction. To exclude the unwanted interpretation in which an elliptical remnant corresponds to an optional sprouted locative adjunct, all stimuli were preceded by a context-setting sentence in which the location of the referent under discussion was specified (see examples (27) to (30) for illustrations). The questionnaire used a Latin-square design and contained six sub-experiments, four of which are relevant for the current study (see the list of stimuli in the Appendix). Two sub-experiments were unrelated to the current study (they contained non-elliptical sentences in which a preposition is doubled, and ellipsis with prepositions as sole items). Our filler stimuli were elliptical sentences with a missing predicate after a finite, non-modal auxiliary verb.
The experiment was run in Qualtrics. Each test stimulus was presented on a separate page, and the order of the target and filler items was randomized across all sub-experiments and participants. The questionnaire was completed by 91 native speakers, 9 of whom self-identified as bilingual (Dutch-Frisian/English/French/ Mandarin/Serbian). The informants did not receive any remuneration for filling in the questionnaire, nor was any personal data retained other than their status as monolingual or bilingual speakers.
The results of the experiment were statistically analyzed in Excel (descriptive statistics) and via the Wilcoxon signed-rank test (the non-parametric equivalent of the dependent t test) in R.
Results. In Sub-experiment 1, preposition stranding in standard (i.e., embedded) sluicing was tested. This sub-experiment contained a 2 9 2 factorial design, where the factors were the presence of preposition stranding by a wh-R-pronoun (Pstranding vs. pied-piping) and the presence of ellipsis (±elliptic). There were four lexicalizations for each condition. Each token contained a different verb and preposition: kijken naar 'look at something', staan op 'stand on something', trekken aan 'pull on something' and gooien met 'throw with something'.
The results of this experiment show that the generalization in (25)  Furthermore, the non-elliptical counterparts of these sentences, which are exemplified in (28), were judged as fully acceptable, with an average of 6.6 and 6.5 respectively.
(28) a. The average mean scores of the four conditions are presented in Fig. 1, with the elliptical conditions in blue and the non-elliptical ones in red. Applying the nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicated that the P-pied-piping ranks (Mdn = 7) are significantly higher than the P-stranding ranks (Mdn = 2) in the ellipsis condition; V = 20.5, p \ .001. The same test also indicated that the P-stranding (Mdn = 7) and the P-pied-piping (Mdn = 7) conditions did not significantly differ in the non-ellipsis condition; V = 276.5, p = .252. This confirms that Dutch speakers cannot strand a preposition in the ellipsis site under standard embedded sluicing.
In a separate sub-experiment (namely, Sub-experiment 2), each elliptical example in Sub-experiment 1 was compared to its non-elliptical cleft counterpart [see, e.g., (29)], in a 2 9 2 factorial manner, where the factors were the presence of P-stranding and the sentence type (elliptical vs. non-elliptical cleft). Just like in Sub-experiment 1, there were four lexicalizations for each condition. The purpose of this experiment was to discover whether the elliptical clauses from Sub-experiment 1 could be clefts. Our informants reported that clefting is degraded but not fully unacceptable both in the P-stranding and pied-piping conditions, as examples in (29) show. Note that cleft continuation without a preposition (i.e., … maar ik weet niet waar het is 'I know not where it is') is fully ungrammatical, and was therefore not tested.
(29) a. non-ellipsis/cleft, P-stranding: degraded acceptability Dirk zit in de woonkamer. Hij kijkt ergens naar, Dirk sits in the living.room he looks something at maar ik weet niet waar R het naar is. (average = 3.4) but I know not where it at is b. non-ellipsis/cleft, P-pied-piped: somewhat degraded acceptability Dirk zit in de woonkamer. Hij kijkt ergens naar, Dirk sits in the living.room he looks something at maar ik weet niet waar R naar het is.
(average = 4.7) but I know not where.at it is  (27) is judged as less acceptable than the cleft in the P-stranding condition, but as more acceptable than the cleft in the P-pied-piping condition. These differences are significant in both cases. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicated that the -ellipsis (cleft) ranks (Mdn = 3) are significantly higher than the ?ellipsis ranks (Mdn = 2) in the P-stranding condition; V = 581, p \ .001. The same test also indicated that the ?ellipsis ranks (Mdn = 7) are significantly higher than the -ellipsis (cleft) ranks (Mdn= 5) in the P-pied-piping condition; V = 2814, p \ .001. Importantly, our informants' judgments differ also with respect to the two cleft conditions: clefts involving P-pied-piping are significantly better than those with P-stranding. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test shows that the P-pied-piping ranks (Mdn = 5) are significantly higher than the P-stranding ranks (Mdn = 3) in the non-elliptical (cleft) condition; V = 832, p \ .05. From these results we can conclude that the elided clause in configurations such as (27b) is not a cleft. Rather, the configuration in (28b), which was judged as perfectly natural, underlies (27b). This once again emphasizes the puzzle at the heart of 'Merchant's Wrinkle': if sluicing with a run-of-the-mill, isomorphic elliptical clause is perfectly acceptable with pied-piped PP remnant, why isn't the same run-of-the-mill configuration available for the P-stranding configuration in (27a)?
Notice that the clefts in (29) are truncated, insofar as their accompanying relative clause is not present. Including the relative clause in the cleft yields similar results. In a post-hoc questionnaire study with 14 native speakers, we found that the preposition cannot be stranded inside the relative clause, with waar as the pivot of the cleft (see (30a), whose average rating was 2.8). A prepositional phrase pivot fares better, but is nevertheless degraded (see (30b), whose average rating was 5.1). We must leave investigation of this intriguing observation for future research.
(30) P-stranding in cleft with relative clause: unacceptable (N = 14) a. Dirk zit in de woonkamer. Hij kijkt ergens naar, Dirk sits in the living room he looks something at maar ik weet niet waar het is dat hij naar kijkt. but I know not where it is that he at looks 'He is looking at something, but I don't know what it is that he is looking at.' Dirk sits in the living room he looks something naar, maar ik weet niet waarnaar het is dat hij kijkt. at but I know not where.at it is that he looks 'He is looking at something, but I don't know what it is that he is looking at.' Finally, in Sub-experiment 3, we tested the acceptability of lexical phrases in fragmentary elliptical clauses. This experiment employed a 2 9 2 factorial design, where the factors were the presence of P-stranding by a wh-R-pronoun (P-stranding versus P-pied-piping) and the sentence type (elliptical versus non-elliptical cleft). There were four lexicalizations for each condition. We found that the elliptical conditions are fully acceptable (see (31B) and (31B 0 ), whose average ratings were 6.8 and 6.2 respectively) whereas the non-elliptical cleft conditions are unacceptable in both cases (see (32B) and (32B 0 ), whose average ratings were 1.6 and 2.3 respectively).
where looks he at 'What is he looking at?' P-pied-piped, ellipsis: acceptable B: Naar mijn favoriete film. The average results for this experiment are presented in Fig. 3. Notice that the results are significant for both the P-stranding and the P-pied-piping conditions. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicated that the ?ellipsis ranks (Mdn = 7) are significantly higher than the -ellipsis (cleft) ranks (Mdn = 2) in the P-stranding condition; V = 3474.5, p \ .001. Similarly, the ?ellipsis ranks (Mdn = 7) are significantly higher than the -ellipsis (cleft) ranks (Mdn = 1) in the P-pied-piping condition; V = 4005, p \ .001.
Based on these results, we conclude that P-less lexical remnants in Dutch do not originate as pivots of a cleft. We propose that these remnants are left-peripheral dislocated constituents that are resumed by an R-pronoun, with clausal ellipsis applying to the resumptive element and whatever follows it (33). This proposal is motivated by the fact that clausal ellipsis in (contrastive) left-dislocation is already known to be available in mainland Germanic languages in some contexts (Den Dikken and Surányi 2017;Abels 2018), and by the fact that there are independent reasons to assume that the non-elliptical counterpart of (31B 0 ) involves (contrastive) left-dislocation with ellipsis of the demonstrative pronoun, as in (34) To summarize: in addition to confirming the claims made in the prior literature about preposition stranding under sluicing in Dutch, the results of our acceptability judgment experiments show that neither pied-piped PP remnants of sluicing nor 'bare' lexical DP remnants (i.e., DPs that are interpreted as complements of prepositions) are extracted from elliptical truncated or full clefts. From this, one may infer that any explanation for why bare R-pronoun remnants are disallowed under sluicing that appeals to non-isomorphic elliptical clefts is likely to be on the wrong track. In the case  (2017) argue that left dislocated phrases can only survive clausal ellipsis if they are explicitly contrastive, the contexts discussed in Abels (2018) do not require explicit contrast. The P-less remnants in our study can, but need not be, contrastive. We leave determining the role of contrast in licensing this type of ellipsis for future research.
of 'bare' lexical DP remnants, we proposed that these are left-dislocated phrases in elliptical clauses that contain preposition stranding A 0 -movement, and which therefore do not violate Merchant's preposition stranding generalization. In short, our experiments confirm the generalization that Dutch R-pronouns cannot strand a preposition in an ellipsis site. In the next section, we refute the extant explanations for why this generalization holds.

Previous analyses
3.1 Merchant (2001): accentuating the R-pronoun remnant Merchant (2001, 95) offers a prosodic explanation for the unavailability of preposition stranding under sluicing in R-pronoun contexts. He proposes that remnants of sluicing must be able to bear both non-contrastive and contrastive focal accents and that R-pronouns make for unsuitable remnants because they can bear only a contrastive focal accent (compare (35a) and (36); see also examples in Hoeksema 2014, 33). Thus, the unavailability of bare R-pronoun remnants in sluicing arises from a clash in the prosodic requirements of R-pronouns, which reject a non-contrastive accent, and sluicing, which induces such an accent (35b Merchant's explanation only works if it is indeed true that R-pronouns cannot bear non-contrastive stress. Problematically, this assumption is false. The pitch contours of some of the pilot recordings we elicited from 3 Dutch native speakers show that R-pronouns can receive both contrastive and non-contrastive (i.e., nuclear/sentencelevel) accent. This is shown on the pitch track in Fig. 4, which we generated from one of our pilot recordings.
(37) Example used in Fig. 4 Hij trekt ergens R aan, maar ik weet niet WAAR R hij aan trekt. he pull somewhere to, but I know not where he to pull 'He is pulling something, but I don't know what he is pulling.' As the arrow indicates, the F0 contour on the area where the second R-pronoun (waar) is positioned exhibits a peak, which is the marker of an accent in Dutch. The area that follows this peak bears a low level flat F0, indicating that this area (i.e., the string hij aan trekt) is deaccented and that the accent on the R-pronoun is the last accent in the sentence. The contrast between the accented R-pronoun and the succeeding deaccented area is also reflected in the mean F0. The mean F0 of waar is 210 Hz, whereas the mean F0 of the deaccented area that follows waar is 165 Hz. Since the final accent in Dutch is interpreted as the most prominent one, it is analyzed as bearing the nuclear/sentence-level accent (Gussenhoven 1984). From this pitch track, we can therefore conclude that the R-pronoun does bear a noncontrastive accent, and this accent is a sentence-level nuclear accent.
Considering that R-pronouns may indeed bear (non-)contrastive accents, Merchant's analysis cannot be correct: there must be another reason for why R-pronouns that bear a non-contrastive accent (such as (35b)) or a contrastive one (such as (38), which is the elliptical counterpart of (36)), cannot be remnants of sluicing.

Accenting the elided preposition
Another potential prosodic solution rests on the assumption-which we will adopt in this subsection for the sake of argument-that ellipsis involves radical deaccentuation (Tancredi 1992). This refers to the idea that only material that is already given (in Schwarzschild's 1999 sense) and therefore prosodically deaccented can be rendered unpronounced: (39) Radical deaccentuation cannot target items that must be accented.
Equipped with (39), one may propose that preposition stranding under sluicing is banned in Dutch because the preposition that is left behind in the ellipsis site must bear an accent, which precludes radical deaccentuation (i.e., ellipsis). At first glance, this explanation seems plausible, as prepositions do indeed receive an accent in most R-pronominalization configurations (see (40), and also Merchant 2001;Gussenhoven 1984, 178-179 For this analysis to work, prepositions in R-pronominalization configurations must always bear an accent. Problematically, this is not true. The example in (41) and its accompanying pitch track in Fig. 5  Like the contour in Fig. 4, the F0 contour in Fig. 5 exhibits a peak on the area where the R-pronoun waar is positioned in the second clause. This marks the nuclear, sentence-level accent. The area that follows this peak bears a low level flat F0, indicating that this area (i.e., the string hij over schrijft) is deaccented and that the accent on the R-pronoun is the last high pitch accent in this sentence. Just like in Fig. 4, the mean F0 of the accented R-pronoun is higher than the mean F0 of the succeeding deaccented string. The mean F0 of waar in Fig. 5 is 235 Hz, whereas the mean F0 of the deaccented area that follows waar is 172 Hz. As the contour below the arrow indicates, the preposition over is deaccented, bearing a mean F0 of 158 Hz.
Furthermore, there are R-prominalization contexts in which prepositions clearly cannot be accented. This is seen in the examples in (42), in which the item that precedes the preposition, rather than the preposition itself, must be accented (see Gussenhoven 1984, 178  here is she happy with happy with 'She is happy about this.' The fact that the prepositions in non-elliptical R-pronominalization configurations may be deaccented means that they can also undergo radical deaccentuation in elliptical contexts. Therefore, the unacceptability of a sluicing construction such as (43), which is the elliptical version of (41), cannot be related to the unavailability of radical deaccentuation on such prepositions.
(43) * Bob schrijft ergens over, maar ik weet niet WAAR hij over schrijft. Bob writes somewhere about but I know not where he about writes 'Bob is writing about something, but I don't know what he is writing about.' In summary, we conclude that neither the R-pronoun nor the preposition exhibit prosodic properties that prevent sluicing from occurring. Therefore, the ban on preposition stranding under sluicing in Dutch cannot be explained by appealing to the accentuation profile of either the preposition with the ellipsis site or the R-pronoun remnant.

Kluck (2015): overtness of P as a syntactic requirement
Recall the generalization on preposition stranding under sluicing presented in Sect. 2 [repeated below in (44)].
(44) Dutch R-pronouns cannot strand a preposition in an ellipsis site. Kluck (2015) views 'Merchant's Wrinkle' being related to prepositions rather than to preposition stranding. As a result, she recasts the generalization in (44) as follows: (45) Prepositions that select R-pronoun arguments must be overt in sluicing.
Kluck suggests that R-pronouns are inherently semantically underspecified and interpreted as either a true locative or as an argument of a preposition only through a syntactic licensing process. She claims that a 'locative-looking' expression such as waar can only be interpreted as an argument of a preposition if its selecting preposition is overt. When there is no selecting preposition in the syntactic phrase marker, or when the selecting preposition is not overt, then only the locative interpretation is licensable, and therefore only the locative interpretation is obtained. The licensing conditions for both interpretations are schematized in (46). In the examples below, dotted arrows mark syntactic licensing.
? incompatible with the ellipsis of P OVERT b.
? compatible with the ellipsis of P NULL Kluck's syntactic licensing mechanism correctly predicts that a sluicing remnant such as waar cannot be interpreted as the argument of a stranded preposition because the stranded preposition, having been rendered null by ellipsis, cannot license its R-pronoun argument. Thus, in a sentence such as (47), the copy of waar in the ellipsis site cannot be licensed by the elided preposition (assuming that the presence of an overt argument licensing preposition in the antecedent clause cannot serve as a licensor itself, via structural parallelism of some sort).  (48), in which the context allows for a (sprouted) true locative interpretation of waar.
(48) P NULL : 4 locative licensing Hij rekent ergens op, he counts some-where on maar ik weet niet [ CP waar LOC but I know not where 'He counts on something, but I don't know where (he counts on something).' Although the syntactic licensing conditions in (46) account for the ban on preposition stranding under sluicing in Dutch R-pronominalization contexts, this analysis exhibits several shortcomings.
First, the postulation of a syntactic licensing relation based on the phonological properties of its licensing head (i.e., overt or null) is ad-hoc, unattested elsewhere in the grammar of Dutch and involves 'look-ahead', as the syntactic licensing of the R-pronoun should take place earlier in the derivational procedure than ellipsis (according to every account that treats the process of deletion as a PF phenomenon). This holds for the licensing of argumental R-pronouns and locative R-pronouns alike.
Second, Kluck's proposal wrongly predicts that whenever the licensor preposition is not overt (e.g., whenever it is elided), the argument meaning of the R-pronoun cannot be licensed, regardless of whether the R-pronoun itself is elided. This prediction is not borne out. In (49), for example, the elided R-pronoun ergens can receive an argumental interpretation despite its licensor preposition being null.  (52)]. Assuming that subjects are islands in non-elliptical contexts because they occupy a derived position (i.e., they are A-moved phrases) (53a), Merchant proposes that subjects inside ellipsis sites are not islands because they do not occupy a derived position. Instead, their movement to SpecTP is bled, meaning that they occupy their base position (53b). Put differently, Merchant proposes that the Subject Condition still applies under sluicing but is circumvented by A-movement being bled.  Dikken (2006, 658) use the same reasoning to explain why the elliptical clause in (54b) is acceptable whereas its non-elliptical counterpart in (54a) is not, following a proposal in Den Dikken et al. (2000). In (54a), the NPI subject cannot be licensed because negation does not c-command it, whereas in (54b) the NPI subject is licensed because it remains in its base position, from which negation c-commands it, as (54c) shows. Note that the representation in (54c) reflects the so-called in-situ view of ellipsis, an operation that does not utilize movement of the remnant to allow unselective deletion of a syntactic constituent.
(54) a. * Any of the printing equipment didn't work. b. A: What didn't work? B: Any of the printing equipment. c.
For the ellipsis site in (54a): [ TP did not [ vP any of the printing equipment] work] Van Craenenbroeck and Den Dikken (2006, 658-663) also argue that movement to SpecTP is bled in Dutch elliptical constructions. Their evidence comes from how complementizer agreement and sluicing interact in Dutch dialects. First, they observe that complementizer agreement is possible in certain varieties of Dutch, but only when the subject has moved to SpecTP (i.e., above the adverb allichte 'probably'): (55) a. … darr-e wiej allichte de wedstrijd winne zölt. that-AGR we probably the game win will Hellendoorn Dutch b. … darr(*-e) allichte wiej de wedstrijd winne zölt.
that-AGR probably we the game win will '…that we will probably win the game.' Second, they observe that complementizer agreement is not permitted under sluicing (compare the examples in (56)). This, they claim, is expected if subjectmovement to SpecTP is bled under ellipsis: the ellipsis site will always pattern with (56b), in which the absence of subject-movement blocks complementizer agreement.
(56) a. Jan weet niet wie darr-e wiej gezien hebt. Hellendoorn Dutch Jan knows not who that-AGR we seen have 'Jan doesn't know who we have seen.' b. Wiej hebt 'r ene ezeen, en Jan weet niet wie(*-e). we have there someone seen and Jan knows not who-AGR As is well known, subject-movement to SpecTP in English occurs to satisfy the Extended Projection Principle (the EPP; Chomsky 1981), which states that the structural subject position-i.e., SpecTP-must be filled. The EPP is a formal syntactic requirement, insofar as it has no intrinsic semantic motivation. Chomsky (1995) recasts the EPP as the description of a syntactic feature, namely the uninterpretable D feature that resides on T. This feature is STRONG, which means that, when it Agrees with the closest phrase that satisfies it, it triggers overt movement to T's specifier (ibid.). This movement can therefore be viewed as EPP-driven movement. Adopting these ideas, Merchant (2001) characterizes the bleeding of subject-movement to SpecTP under ellipsis as the bleeding of EPP-driven movement. Exactly how ellipsis bleeds EPP-driven movement is currently unknown, as no adequate formal analysis has yet been developed that avoids the 'look-ahead' problem that afflicts Merchant's (2001) original account (though see Den Dikken 2013 for possible workarounds). We do not attempt to develop such an analysis here: we instead assume that such an analysis can in principle be developed (i.e., the task might be difficult, but not impossible). What is important for our current purpose is not how ellipsis bleeds EPP-driven movement but simply that ellipsis does bleed it, and that there is robust empirical evidence for this fact. Consequently, the generalization presented in (57) will suffice for our purposes. 8 (57) Bleeding EPP-driven movement under sluicing Let F be a feature borne by a STRONG head. If F is a purely formal feature (i.e., it has no semantic import), then F is never present in a TP-ellipsis site. 9 In more recent research, the term 'EPP-feature' has been applied to other features that, like the uninterpretable D feature on T, are STRONG and which make no discernible semantic contribution. For instance, Cable (2010) characterizes the uninterpretable Q feature on C as an EPP-feature. Our analysis of 'Merchant's Wrinkle' capitalizes on the fact that EPP-features have been identified in additional syntactic domains. Extending the analysis in Koopman (2000), we propose that the head of the highest functional projection in the Dutch locative PP, namely PlaceP (which was referred to simply as 'FP' in Sect. 2), bears an EPP-feature, and it is this feature which, when checked by an R-pronoun, triggers movement of the R-pronoun to SpecPlaceP. If ellipsis bleeds EPP-features, then this feature should therefore be bled under sluicing. We propose that this is precisely what happens. Because SpecPlaceP is the 'escape hatch' through which R-pronouns must move in order to exit the PP domain to form 8 The formulation in (57) presupposes that EPP-driven movement is obligatorily bled under clausal ellipsis. The data discussed in the prior literature support this view: the English data in (52) and (54) are compatible with bleeding being obligatory (but fail to rule out the possibility that bleeding is optional), whereas the Dutch data favor an 'obligatory bleeding' perspective. Seeing as our analysis of R-pronouns will rely on EPP-driven movement being obligatorily bled under ellipsis, an anonymous reviewer wonders whether additional data can be adduced to support the 'obligatory bleeding' position. We tentatively suggest that English subject fragments, which must arise in the default, accusative form [see (i)], could feasibly be analyzed as supporting this position. If nominative-case assignment is tied to an EPP-feature on T in English, and if this feature is absent if T is contained in a TP-ellipsis site [following (57)], then the English subject fragment case facts are explained. P-stranding configurations such as P-stranding wh-clauses (see Sect. 4.2), bleeding EPP-driven movement of R-pronouns to SpecPlaceP therefore precludes R-pronouns from undergoing the wh-movement required to form wh-clauses. Put differently and more succinctly, we claim that: (58) A bleeding analysis of 'Merchant's Wrinkle' P-stranding under sluicing in Dutch is impossible because ellipsis bleeds P-stranding wh-movement. 10 The rest of this section is devoted to positioning the proposal encapsulated in (58) within a formal syntactic theory of Dutch locative PPs, R-pronouns, and EPPfeatures (Sects. 4.2.1-4.2.2). Although we do this primarily to show that (58) is compatible with contemporary views on the syntax of Dutch PPs, we hope that presenting an explicit formalism for (58) will prove beneficial for researchers who are working on these or closely related phenomena in the mainland Germanic languages. We should mention at this point that we view the following analysis as only one possible treatment of the facts, and as such we are not especially wedded to the technical apparatus (e.g., systems of feature-checking, particular feature values, etc.) that we employ, despite the ease with which it captures the data at hand. In addition to introducing such a formal theory, in Sect. 4.2.3. we will also show that our proposal of EPP satisfaction by R-pronouns finds parallels in the clausal domain as well, when considering recent work by Wesseling (2018) showing that both true pleonastics (er) and contentful locative phrases (such as hier 'here' and daar 'there') can satisfy T's EPP feature.

The technical apparatus: Pesetsky and Torrego's (2007) feature system
We adopt the feature-sharing Agree system outlined by Pesetsky and Torrego (2007), who distinguish between the interpretability and valuation of features. This yields the fourfold typology presented in (59). Here, the symbols i and u stand for 'interpretable' and 'uninterpretable'. The term that precedes the colon, which is represented here by the placeholder F, is the feature's attribute, and the term that follows the colon, which is represented here by the placeholder val, is the feature's value. An underscore denotes an unvalued feature. (When the interpretability and/or value of a feature is irrelevant to our analysis, we will not represent it in our phrase marker diagrams.) 10 An anonymous reviewer asks for clarification about place of EPP-bleeding in the architecture of grammar. Our understanding of Merchant (2001) and Den Dikken and Van Craenenbroeck (2006) is that EPP-bleeding is the absence in the numeration of those features that are present only to ensure that PFdemands are satisfied. Thus, EPP-bleeding occurs in the (pre-)syntax, yielding the most economical derivation possible (because those costly operations that take place to satisfy PF-demands do not occur). It therefore seems feasible to associate EPP-bleeding under ellipsis with a demand for global economy: the smallest numeration containing a particular type of [E]-feature is favored, and this numeration will not contain features that are present purely to ensure that PF-demands are satisfied, as these demands need not be satisfied when ellipsis occurs.
(59) iF: val = interpretable and valued iF: _ = interpretable and unvalued uF: val = uninterpretable and valued uF: _ = uninterpretable and unvalued In this system, the operation Agree (Chomsky 2000(Chomsky , 2001 works as follows: (60) Agree (simplified from Pesetsky and Torrego 2007) a. An unvalued feature Fa (a Probe) on a head H scans its c-command domain for another instance of Fb (a Goal) with which to agree. b. Replace Fa with Fb, so that the same feature is present in both locations.
We also assume that atomic features form feature-sets. For instance, the atomic features PLURAL, GENDER, ANIMATE, etc., form the u-feature feature-set (Harley and Ritter 2002).
We must make one extension to this otherwise well-established system of feature-checking. We will allow that feature attributes can, under well-defined conditions, be repurposed as values (61). This notion of repurposing feature attributes as values will play a pivotal role in the analysis presented below.

(61) Feature repurposing
If an Agree relationship has been established between Fa (the Probe) on head H 1 and Fb (the Goal) on head H 2 , then an independent feature attribute G on H 1 can be repurposed as a value for Fb (provided that G could independently serve as a value for Fb).
To provide an example of how (60) and (61) work together, consider the abstract scenario presented in (62). Because the u-feature on H is unvalued, it probes its c-command domain for another occurrence of itself. It establishes an Agree relationship with the u-feature bundle on X, and therefore receives val 1 and val 2 from its Goal. Problematically, one of the atomic u-features on X (namely, F 3 ) remains unvalued. When this happens, feature repurposing occurs, and G on H is repurposed as a value for F 3 .
11 11 We view Agree as a relation between feature-bundles (i.e., syntactic heads), with Agree relations being established by one (or more) feature(s) within a bundle successfully probing downwards for a suitable goal feature. Once an Agree relation is established between two heads, the structural position of these heads relative to each other becomes irrelevant for the purposes of feature sharing/valuation. Under this conception of Agree, the idea that Feature Repurposing involves an additional instance of 'reverse' or 'upwards' Agree (Pesetsky and Torrego 2007;Zeijlstra 2012) above and beyond the Agree relation already established via the higher u-Probe (as an anonymous reviewer suggests) becomes otiose. Note also that upwards Agree necessarily involves an uninterpretable feature probing upwards for its interpretable counterpart (Zeijlstra 2012), which is not required for Feature Repurposing. The anonymous reviewer is therefore correct that Feature Repurposing is similar in spirit to Pesetsky and Torrego's (2001) analysis of nominative case-checking [which, we contend, does not exhibit the flaws attributed to it by Pesetsky and Torrego in their later work (2007, 277)].
(62) a. Before F probes for its Goal b. Agree relationship established; G on head H is repurposed as the value for F on head X (underlined values are obtained via Agree) In Sect. 4.2.2, we will present our assumptions regarding the internal syntax of R-pronouns. Afterwards, we will show how the internal syntax we assume interacts with the PP domain in which such pronouns are observed. Following a detailed formalization of how R-pronouns are derived in the domain of PP, we will revisit the elliptical cases. In line with (58), we show how the syntax we suggest for R-pronoun containing PPs are not fit for deriving wh R (without an overt P) in the context of ellipsis.

The formal analysis
As already discussed in Sects. 2 and 3, Dutch has two types of locative pronouns: 'true' locative pronouns, which linearly follow their selecting preposition and which are interpreted as denoting a location, and R-pronouns, which linearly precede their selecting preposition and which, despite appearances, exhibit the syntactic and semantic hallmarks of standard, non-human personal pronouns (it, what, etc.). Kayne (2004) accounts for these differences by proposing that the pronounced item in each case (i.e., er, waar, daar, etc.) is not actually a pronoun but rather a demonstrative that selects for a null noun, either PLACE (in the case of true locatives) or THING (in the case of R-pronouns) (63). 12,13 (63)

True locative pronoun R-pronoun
For reasons discussed later in this subsection, we believe that Kayne's core insight is better served by adopting a decompositional, Distributed Morphology approach, in which waar, er, daar etc. is the phonological realization of a complex syntactic head comprising an underspecified n head and a D head that can be specified for definiteness and wh-features. In the 'true locative' case, n bears an interpretable LOC feature, which captures the fact that true locatives arise with an inherently locative meaning (64). Although n in the R-pronoun case also bears LOC, it does so only as a formal u-feature value (65). A first-blush approximation of the Vocabulary We wish to endorse Kayne's proposal for Dutch, and simultaneously highlight that Kayne's proposal is entirely unrelated to Kluck's analysis from the previous section. Kayne does not equate inherently null prepositions (i.e., Ps that are unpronounced even in non-elliptical environments) with prepositions that are ordinarily exponed but are rendered unpronounced when contained in a larger elided phrase. Therefore, his account does not ban R-pronouns from being selected by prepositions that will, at PF, be elided (indeed, to do this would incur the same 'look-ahead' problem from which Kluck's analysis suffers). Let us focus on the n head in (65). Following the standard assumption that n heads are subcategorized for certain inherent inflectional morphological values (i.e., they ordinarily bear u-features for gender and animacy) (Don 2004;Aquaviva 2009;Kalin 2019), we propose that the inanimate feature value on n in Dutch is defective, insofar as it arises from the lexicon without a prespecified value. This feature must therefore be valued via an Agree relationship with a suitable c-commanding Probe (Chomsky 2000(Chomsky , 2001. Problematically, those prepositions with which R-pronouns appear do not bear suitable Probes for n's defective feature, and, as a consequence, an uninterpretable u-feature that can enter into an Agree relationship with n must be inserted on a higher functional head in the PP domain to ensure that the syntactic derivation can proceed without crashing. Put in Kalin's (2019) terms, a functional head must, as a last resort, be converted into 'u-probe' for n's defective feature.
The functional head that establishes an agreement relationship with the R-pronoun is Place in Dutch (Koopman 2000;Den Dikken 2010), which c-commands the PP. We follow Koopman (2000) in analyzing Place as an attribute of those locative phrases that allow for R-pronominalization, but we do not adopt Koopman's view that Place is the syntactic locus of locative meaning. 14 Due to its inherent relationship with location, we assume that Place has an unvalued uLOC feature and it must establish an Agree relationship with the PP. In addition, Place is a STRONG head, which means that Agreeing with the PP will ordinarily trigger the overt movement of the PP to SpecPlaceP (67) (Koopman 2000). The fact that the PP moves to SpecPlaceP explains why a non-R-pronominal DP cannot strand its preposition in Dutch: P-stranding subextraction induces an island violation, as PP occupies a derived position.
(67) a. before movement of PP 'to the station' to SpecPlaceP b. after movement of PP 'to the station' to SpecPlaceP As mentioned above, Place becomes a u-probe in R-pronoun configurations. This means that Place will bear (at least) two features that will probe: (68) R-pronoun configuration, before the features on Place probe for their Goals As (68) illustrates, Place must establish two distinct Agree relationships in R-pronoun configurations: one with the PP and one with the R-pronoun. Because Place is a STRONG head, one of these Agree relationships triggers overt movement of the Goal to SpecPlaceP. The word order of Dutch R-pronominalization, wherein an R-pronoun always precedes its selecting preposition (see Sect. 2), informs us that the R-pronoun, rather than the PP, always moves to SpecPlaceP (69). 15 Because Dutch does not permit multiply-filled specifiers (for instance, only one phrase can occupy the voorveld, which is usually analyzed as SpecCP; see the Taalportaal, section 11.1.III; Landsbergen et al. 2014), this entails that movement of the R-pronoun bleeds movement of the PP (Koopman 2000).
Because the u-feature on Place is unvalued (by definition), it does not itself provide the defective -HUMAN feature on n with its much-needed value. Instead, an independent feature on Place is co-opted for this purpose, utilizing the operation of Feature Repurposing defined in (61) from Sect. 4.2.1. This feature will then be transferred to n via the established Agree relationship, where it will serve as the value for n's defective -HUMAN feature. Because Place independently bears an uninterpretable LOC feature, the value transferred to n is therefore LOC, as (69) already shows. This is how R-pronouns receive their ?loc specification and are consequently exponed in a locative form.
(69) R-pronoun configuration, after Agree and movement to SpecPlaceP As the highest specifier in the functional sequence that comprises the PP domain, SpecPlaceP is the escape hatch from which an R-pronoun may escape the PP domain altogether, thus stranding its preposition inside the PP (Koopman 2000;Den Dikken 2010, following van Riemsdijk 1978. Because SpecPlaceP is an escape hatch only for phrases that can independently stop and be spelled-out in its specifier (i.e., if movement to SpecPlaceP is triggered for reasons other than escaping the PP domain), PP-pied-piping configurations involve movement of the entire PP domain (ibid.), as already mentioned in Sect. 2, and as shown in (71) and (72). 16 16 An R-pronoun can appear either before or after a degree (tien meter) or deictic locative (vlak) modifier, without affecting the interpretation, as shown in (i) and (ii) (Van Riemsdijk 1978). For Koopman (2000), these modifiers occupy a Deg(place)P projection that selects PlaceP. In (i), the R-pronoun stops in SpecPlaceP, whereas in (ii) it moves to the specifier CP(Place), the highest functional projection in the PP domain, which selects DegP [compare (iii) and (iv)]. Consequently, CP(Place) is the escape hatch from the PP domain for Koopman, rather than SpecPlaceP, as in our analysis. Assuming that PP-pied-piping involves movement of the entire PP domain, Koopman (2010) predicts that complex PPs such as those in (i) and (ii) can undergo PP-pied-piping to form standard topicalization and wh-question configurations. Based on feedback from 8 native speakers we informally consulted, this prediction appears to be incorrect: topicalization with er in the initial position is degraded (in opposition to reports in the literature), while non-echoic wh-movement with waar in the initial position is unacceptable, see (ii) and (iii) below. We conclude from this that there is insufficient evidence to motivate the existence of functional structure higher than PlaceP within the locative PP domain. We leave open the question of precisely how the word-order variation exemplified in (i) and ( Before returning to ellipsis, let us summarize the formal analysis of R-pronominalization that we have outlined so far. While we have adopted Kayne's (2004) suggestion that the syntactic and semantic differences between true locative pronouns and R-pronouns can be attributed to them exhibiting distinct nominal cores, we have departed from Kayne's analysis by couching this distinction in a 'decompositional' framework. We did this for two reasons. First, such an approach naturally explains why Dutch R-pronominalization is obligatory. If the phonological exponence of a non-human pronoun is determined by its syntactic environment (as we claim), then every such pronoun that is merged in the 'R-pronoun' positioni.e., a position from which it will receive the value LOC under Agree with Placewill necessarily be realized in the locative form. In other words, it is impossible to expone the standard pronoun het/wat in this position, as the Vocabulary Insertion rule(s) for het/wat do(es) not include ?loc. In contrast, Kayne's account requires additional stipulations to capture the fact that R-pronominalization is mandatory, which Kayne himself neglects to provide.
Second, it explains why only pronouns, and not non-human lexical DPs, undergo movement to SpecPlaceP. This is because the n head that nominalizes a lexical root need not be specified for ±HUMAN features, as the (non-)humanness of roots is conventional knowledge and therefore not encoded in the grammatical system in Dutch. Because pronouns are functional items (and are therefore rootless by definition), their (non-)humanness does need to be expressed via a grammatical means, namely via u-features on n.
We have also adopted Koopman's (2000) claim that Place is a STRONG head and that the PP and R-pronoun compete to fill Place's specifier (with the R-pronoun always winning). By adopting Koopman's analysis, we inherit from her an explanation for why Dutch is ordinarily a non-P-stranding language (namely, PP occupies a derived position and is therefore an island for subextraction).
Let us now return to ellipsis, recalling from Sect. 4.1 the following generalization: (73) Bleeding EPP-driven movement under sluicing Let F be a feature borne by a STRONG head. If F is a purely formal feature (i.e., it has no semantic import), then F is never present in a TP-ellipsis site.
In this subsection, we have seen that Place, a STRONG head, bears two features. Both of these features are uninterpretable: the uLOC feature lacks semantic import (see footnote 14 above), and the u-feature that is inserted purely as a last resort (to ensure that the R-pronoun's -HUMAN feature is valued and therefore that a derivational 'crash' is avoided) is similarly uninterpretable. For this reason, both of these features fit the description in (73) of an EPP-feature, and therefore are never present in a TP-ellipsis site. As already mentioned in Sect. 4.1, the repercussion of this is that wh-R-pronouns do not undergo movement to SpecPlaceP under sluicing, and therefore cannot escape via this position to SpecCP (in addition to this, they fail to get a loc value for their defective i-HUMAN feature; see (74)). This bleeds preposition stranding wh-R-movement under sluicing. (Note that R-pronominalization is still available in the configuration exemplified in (75)

A parallel in the clausal domain: EPP checking by er and true locative pronouns
Having introduced our analysis in the previous two subsections, we turn now to the broader picture, with the hope to convince the reader that the EPP-driven movement observed in the PP domain in Dutch (i.e., movement to SpecPlaceP) can be related to satisfying the EPP in the inflectional domain (i.e., filling SpecTP). Recent research from Wesseling (2018) suggests that the two phenomena share important commonalities, namely that both Place and T come prespecified with a LOC feature and both can be u-probes. According to Wesseling, T also exhibits the property of requiring only one of its two features-either the LOC or u feature-to be checked under Agree (whether Place exhibits the same property is beyond the scope of this paper). This commonality explains why true pleonastic subjects in Dutch, such as those found in impersonal passive configurations (76), arise in the same locative form that some R-pronouns do, and for why semantically contentful locative phrases (such as hier 'here' and daar 'there') can satisfy the EPP. In the 17 The most plausible candidate for 'phase head' status in the Dutch spatial prepositional domain is Place. (P cannot be a phase head: if it were, antilocality (Abels 2003) would prevent R-pronouns from reaching SpecPlaceP, contrary to observation.) If Place is a phase head, and if edge features indeed exist, then Place should bear edge features that attract the complement of P to SpecPlaceP regardless of whether ellipsis occurs. Thus, if our analysis is correct, then Place cannot bear edge features. But why not? One possibility is that PlaceP is not a phase in Dutch. The second possibility is that Place is indeed a phase head, but that it does not bear edge features for reasons concerning input in L1 acquisition. Under ordinary circumstances (i.e., in non-elliptical contexts), the effect of edge features on Place would never be seen, as the uu and uLOC features borne by Place already attract the PP or the R-pronoun into SpecPlaceP, therefore performing the function that edge features on Place would otherwise perform. Having no reason to suppose that edge features are present on Place, Dutch L1 learners therefore acquire Place as a phasal head without edge features. This acquisition tactic is generally economical (as edge features on Place are redundant in non-elliptical contexts), having only a negligible downside, which is that P-stranding of R-pronouns under sluicing is not possible. case where the EPP is satisfied by a semantically contentful locative pronoun, such pronouns are probed by T's LOC feature, rather than by its u-probing feature (77). In the expletive case, the defective -HUMAN feature on n receives the LOC value from the u-probe on T [see (78)], and therefore the expletive is exponed as a locative, according to the Vocabulary Insertion rules listed in (66). Note that exponence of non-human pronouns as locatives is restricted to R-pronouns and pleonastic subjects because it is only in the structural configurations that these pronouns are observed that n's defective feature will fail to procure a value from another u-probe already in present in the syntax [such as under sisterhood with v, in the case of Agentive subjects (79)].
I think that EXPL/ there/ here probably is sung 'I think that there is probably singing (there/here).' (modified from Wesseling 2018, 4) (77) Using a true locative pronoun to satisfy the EPP in Dutch (78) Using an expletive pronoun to satisfy the EPP in Dutch (79) Using an agentive personal pronoun to satisfy the EPP in Dutch (before movement to SpecTP) The fact that locative features have been implicated in satisfying the classic EPP in Dutch provides indirect but independent support for our claim that movement of R-pronouns to SpecPlaceP is EPP-driven movement, which, like other EPP-driven movement investigated in the literature, is subject to bleeding under sluicing.

Extensions
In the previous section, we argued that ellipsis itself-rather than, e.g., the prosody requirements of the R-pronoun-is responsible for bleeding preposition stranding under sluicing in Dutch. If this is true, then preposition stranding is bled in all configurations that involve clausal ellipsis, not just sluicing. This can therefore be utilized as diagnostic for clausal ellipsis in more 'exotic' syntactic structures. Let us first apply this diagnostic to right node raising, a configuration whose syntactic structure remains hotly debated (see Barros and Vicente 2011 for pertinent discussion and references). For advocates of ellipsis-based analyses of right node raising, an English right node raising utterance such as (80a) is derived via the application of clausal ellipsis in the initial coordinand (80b). If ellipsis-based analyses are correct, then stranding a preposition in the alleged ellipsis site in the initial coordinand should be impossible in Dutch R-pronominalization contexts, leading to the prediction that an R-pronoun should not arise unaccompanied by its preposition in the initial coordinand. The examples in (81) demonstrate that this prediction is not borne out: the relevant R-pronouns (daar in each case) can arise unaccompanied by their prepositions (over and naar, respectively). This suggests that, at least in cases such as these, right node raising is not derived via ellipsis-a conclusion that dovetails with the conclusions drawn by McCawley (1982), Wilder (1999), de Vos and Vicente (2005), Bachrach and Katzir (2009) We can also apply our diagnostic to so-called reformulative appositions. These are appositions that function to provide an additional referent for their anchor (see (82a), where the apposition and its discourse markers are italicized, and anchor is boldfaced). The syntactic structure of (seemingly) subclausal reformulative appositions is debated: some researchers claim that they are derived by clausal ellipsis (82b) (Döring 2014;Ott 2016) whereas others argue that they are not (82c) (Griffiths 2015a, b). In the Dutch cases, one observes that reformulative appositional R-pronouns-daar in each example in (83)-can arise unaccompanied by a preposition. This would be impossible if the appositional R-pronoun was the remnant of clausal ellipsis, as ellipsis bleeds preposition stranding. This therefore suggests that reformulative appositions are not derived by clausal ellipsis, which aligns with Griffiths' conclusions. More specifically, Griffiths argues that reformulative appositions are coordinated with their anchors, which yields the prediction that a reformulative apposition must have the same syntactic/semantic type as its anchor (as coordination must be balanced). The Dutch R-pronoun data provide support for this aspect of Griffiths' analysis, too: a DP anchor cannot be followed by a PP apposition, and vice versa (84).
The Big Apple, i.e. New York, is a huge city. b.
The Big Apple, i.e. New York is a big city, is a big city. c. [

Conclusion
This paper offered an explanation for the observation that preposition stranding is bled under sluicing in Dutch R-pronominalization configurations-an observation that, at first glance, appears to contradict Merchant's (2001) preposition stranding generalization. Having demonstrated that R-pronouns make for suitable remnants of sluicing (contra Merchant 2001) and that prepositions that select R-pronouns are elidable (contra Kluck 2015), we offered an analysis according to which ellipsis itself is responsible for preposition stranding being bled under ellipsis in R-pronominalization configurations. In particular, we adopted Koopman's (2000) and Den Dikken's (2010) claim that the initial step of syntactic movement that generates preposition stranding configurations in Dutch is EPP-driven and proposed that features that trigger EPPdriven movement are obligatorily absent in clausal ellipsis sites, which therefore precludes the preposition stranding under sluicing (following similar earlier proposals by Merchant 2001;Den Dikken and Van Craenenbroeck 2006;Den Dikken 2013). We presented a formal implementation of this idea, utilizing contemporary notions from Distributed Morphology and from Pesetsky and Torrego's (2007) system of syntactic feature checking. The resulting analysis dovetails with recent research on the nature of the 'classic' EPP condition in Dutch from Wesseling (2018) and generates a diagnostic test that we utilized for diagnosing (the absence of) clausal ellipsis in right node raising and appositional configurations in Dutch.
In short, we have demonstrated that, once the obstructive nature of ellipsis is properly considered, the absence of preposition stranding under sluicing in Dutch R-pronominalization contexts does not represent a serious challenge to Merchant's preposition stranding generalization.
(Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research) through the Vrije Competitie project 'Ellipsis licensing beyond syntax' and through a bezoekersbeurs obtained by Merchant in 2017. All errors and shortcomings are our own.
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Appendix with stimuli used in the experiments reported in Sect. 2 Sub-experiment 1 1a. Dirk zit in de woonkamer. Hij kijkt ergens naar, maar ik weet niet waar.
Dirk sits in the living.room he looks somewhere at but I know not where 1b. Dirk zit in de woonkamer. Hij kijkt ergens naar, maar ik weet niet waarnaar.
Dirk sits in the living.room he looks somewhere at but I know not where.at 1c. Dirk zit in de woonkamer. Hij kijkt ergens naar, maar ik weet niet waar hij naar kijkt. Dirk sits in the living.room he looks somewhere at but I know not where he at looks 1d. Dirk zit in de woonkamer. Hij kijkt ergens naar, maar ik weet niet waarnaar hij kijkt. Dirk sits in the living.room he looks somewhere at but I know not where.at he looks 2a. Lena is in de speeltuin. Ze staat ergens op, maar ik weet niet waar.
Lena is in the playground she stands somewhere on but I know not where 2b. Lena is in de speeltuin. Ze staat ergens op, maar ik weet niet waarop.
Lena is in the playground she stands somewhere on but I know not where.on 2c. Lena is in de speeltuin. Ze staat ergens op, maar ik weet niet waar zij op staat.
Lena is in the playground she stands somewhere on but I know not where she on stands 2d. Lena is in de speeltuin. Ze staat ergerns op, maar ik weet niet waarop zij staat.
Lena is in the playground she stands somewhere on but I know not where.on she stands 3a. Het jongetje loopt naast zijn moeder. Hij trekt ergens aan, maar ik weet niet waar. the boy walks beside his mother he pulls somewhere to but I know not where 3b. Het jongetje loopt naast zijn moeder. Hij trekt ergens aan, maar ik weet niet waaraan. the boy walks beside his mother he pulls somewhere to but I know not where.to 3c. Het jongetje loopt naast zijn moeder. Hij trekt ergens aan, maar ik weet niet waar hij aan trekt. the boy walks beside his mother he pulls somewhere to but I know not where he to pulls 3d. Het jongetje loopt naast zijn moeder. Hij trekt ergens aan, maar ik weet niet waaraan hij trekt. the boy walks beside his mother he pulls somewhere to but I know not where.to he pulls 4a. Anne staat op het sportveld. Ze gooit ergens mee, maar ik weet niet waar.
Anne stands on the sportfield she throws somewhere with but I know not where 4b. Anne staat op het sportveld. Ze gooit ergens mee, maar ik weet niet waarmee.
Anne stands on the sportfield she throws somewhere with but I know not where.with 4c. Anne staat op het sportveld. Ze gooit ergens mee, maar ik weet niet waar ze mee gooit. Anne stands on the sportfield she throws somewhere with but I know not where she with throws 4d. Anne staat op het sportveld. Ze gooit ergens mee, maar ik weet niet waarmee ze gooit. Anne stands on the sportfield she throws somewhere with but I know not where.with she throws Sub-experiment 2, non-ellipsis/cleft conditions 5a. Dirk zit in de woonkamer. Hij kijkt ergens naar, maar ik weet niet waar het naar is. Dirk sits in the living.room he looks somewhere at but I know not where that at is 5b. Dirk zit in de woonkamer. Hij kijkt ergens naar, maar ik weet niet waarnaar het is. Dirk sits in the living.room he looks somewhere at but I know not where.at that is 6a. Lena is in de speeltuin. Ze staat ergens op, maar ik weet niet waar het op is.
Lena is in the playground she stands somewhere on but I know not where that on is 6b. Lena is in de speeltuin. Ze staat ergens op, maar ik weet niet waarop het is.
Lena is in the playground she stands somewhere on but I know not where.on that is 7a. Het jongetje loopt naast zijn moeder. Hij trekt ergens aan, maar ik weet niet waar het aan is. the boy walks beside his mother he pulls somewhere to but I know not where that to is 7b. Het jongetje loopt naast zijn moeder. Hij trekt ergens aan, maar ik weet niet waaraan het is. the boy walks beside his mother he pulls somewhere to but I know not where.to that is 8a. Anne staat op het sportveld. Ze gooit ergens mee, maar ik weet niet waar het mee is. Anne stands on the sport.field she throws somewhere with but I know not where that with is 8b. Anne staat op het sportveld. Ze gooit ergens mee, maar ik weet niet waarmee het is. Anne stands on the sport.field she throws somewhere with but I know not where.with that is where sat you on B: Een bankje is het.
a bench is that 9d. A: Waar zat je op?
where sat you on B: Op een bankje is het.
on a bench is that 10a. A: Waar gooide je mee?
where threw you with B: Een softbal. a softball 10b. A: Waar gooide je mee?
where threw you with B: Met een softbal.
where threw you with B: Een softbal is het.
a softball is that 10d. A: Waar gooide je mee?
where threw you with B: Met een softbal is het.
with a softball is that where looks he at B: Naar mijn favoriete film.
at my favorite film 11c. A: Waar kijkt hij naar?
where looks he at B: Mijn favoriete film is het.
my favorite film is that 11d. A: Waar kijkt hij naar?
where looks he at B: Naar mijn favoriete film is het.
at my favorite film is that 12a. A: Waar trekken jullie aan?
where pull you to B: Het touw.
where pull you to B: Aan het touw.
where pull you to B: Het touw is het.
the rope is that 12d. A: Waar trekken jullie aan?
where pull you to B: Aan het touw is het.
to the rope is that Sub-experiment reported in footnote 5 13a. A: Jan probeert iets te verbergen. Hij staat ergens voor. Jan tries something to hide he stands somewhere before 'Jan is trying to hide something. He is standing in front of something.' B: Waar? where 13b. A: De naam van winkelketen HEMA is een afkorting. Het staat ergens voor.
the name of retail.chain HEMA is an acronym it stands something for 'The name of the HEMA retail chain is an acronym. It refers to something.' B: Waar? where