Economy in PF-Reduction: Why and when (not) to elide multidominant structures?

In this talk, reporting on joint work with Martina Gračanin-Yuksek, we examine two ways in which a syntactic structure can be PF-reduced (unpronounced): multidominance (MD) and ellipsis. If both ellipsis and MD are available in principle, the following questions arise: (i) what factors influence the choice between ellipsis and MD? (ii) can multiply-dominated material be elided and if so, under what circumstances? To answer these questions, we look at the properties of coordinate structures in which the elements that survive PF-reduction are wh-phrases: Coordinated Wh-Questions (CWHs) and Coordinated Sluices (CSs), illustrated in (1-2).

(1) What and when should you teach?                                                                   CWH

(2) Someone saw something, but I can’t remember who or what.                         CS

Our main claim is that PF reduction is governed by economy, which affects syntactic derivations in two ways. First, economy favors “least effort” derivations (i.e., derivations with fewest operations) from the set of possible derivations that arrive at the same string with the same interpretation (Chomsky 1991; Bošković 1997; Collins 2001; among many others), and, second, economy bans derivations in which PF reducing operations apply vacuously (i.e., without having an effect on pronunciation).

Location: Royce Hall 362