Re: USAGE: Garden paths

"SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY" wrote:

> On Fri, 18 Aug 2000, J Matthew Pearson wrote:
>
> > Hmm.  I thought about that when I made my original comment, but when it came down to
> > it I couldn't actually think of any examples of acceptable but ungrammatical
> > constructions.
>
> What about parasitic gaps?  Those frequently are barely acceptable and, but
> according to some theories should be ungrammatical.  At least, Dominique
> Sportiche, in his syntax course during the Spring Quarter, stated that
> they are ungrammatical, but usually accepted.  The fact that they are
> usually clumsy at best may be support for such a view.
Hmph.  Parasitic gaps are generally characterized as grammatical, but it's true that
they're often rather marginal.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, a
"parasitic gap" is a gap in an embedded sentence which is licensed by a gap in a main
sentence.  For example, take the sentence:

  He filed the papers.

If you change "the papers" into an interrogative phrase ("which papers") it moves to the
front of the sentence, leaving a gap behind:

  Which papers did he file __ ?

Normally there's a one-to-one correspondence between gaps and wh-phrases, but sometimes a
single wh-phrase may correspond to two gaps (the second one being 'parasitic' on the
first).  Compare:

  He filed the papers without reading them.
  Which papers did he file __ without reading __ ?

I'm not so fond of parasitic gaps in questions, but I think they're just fine in relative
clauses:

  I need to see the papers [which he filed __ without reading __]

Matt.