A new shared antecedent approach to parasitic gaps: Explaining connectivity and the A-/Ā-distinction

Matthew Hewett

Keywords: parasitic gaps, binding, syntactic category, connectivity effects, multidominance, layering, A-/Ā-distinction

Abstract: Prior literature has debated whether multiple gaps in parasitic gap constructions have a shared antecedent or separate antecedents. I adduce novel arguments for a shared antecedent approach from connectivity effects in English: parasitic gaps obligatorily match the category and binding theoretic class of the filler. I develop an analysis of parasitic gaps that derives these facts by synthesizing two very different previous accounts---Nissenbaum (2000) and Nunes (2004)---in a way that preserves key insights of both. My analysis also automatically explains why Ā-movement but not A-movement licenses parasitic gaps (Engdahl 1983), which are themselves created by Ā-movement (Kayne 1983; Nissenbaum 2000), once we adopt the proposal that constituents undergoing Ā-movement (i.e. QPs) are structurally distinct from constituents undergoing A-movement (i.e. DPs; see Cable 2010; Safir 2019): this is just another manifestation of category connectivity.

Submission Number: 35