Re: USAGE: Garden paths

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
C'est la` pourtant que se livre le sens du dire, de ce que, s'y conjuguant
le nyania qui bruit des sexes en compagnie, il supplee a ce qu'entre eux,
de rapport nyait pas.               -- Jacques Lacan, "L'Etourdit"

On Fri, 18 Aug 2000, Marcus Smith wrote:

> Matt Pearson wrote:
>
> >Hmph.  Parasitic gaps are generally characterized as grammatical, but it's
> true that
> >they're often rather marginal.
>
> Nowadays they are.  In the older literature they were often called
> ungrammatical.  (At least that is how it was taught to me, I haven't actually
> read the older literature on the topic.  I'm trying to find my notes on the
> topic, but can't seem to.)
>
>   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.
>
> Right.  So we have a single constituent binding two gaps.  Under a movement
> based theory of language, it's hard to see how that is possible.  I remember
> the structural configurations that are supposed to hold in parasitic gaps, but
> I cannot recall ever being given a reasonable explanation of why they are
> possible. I guess there would have to be a silent or erased element somewhere,
> but I personally find that kind of reasoning sloppy and hard to prove.
>
> As I mentioned before, when this phenomenon was taught to me (three or four
> months ago) the prof expressed the opinion that they were ungrammatical, but
> acceptable.  I presume the acceptibility is due to the fact that they are
> completely unambiguous.  That is, since English generally does not allow
> arguments to drop out of a sentence, you can safely assume that the "moved"
> constitutent originated in both gaps.
>
> Marcus
>