Two Types of Gapping in Spanish
Wonsuk Jung
University of Kyunghee, [email protected]/[email protected]
Keywords: low-coordination, high-coordination, prosody, cumulative agreement, word order,
Spec-Head agreement.
The issue. Gapping has two different scope readings of the negation (or modals) (cf. Siegel 1987;
Potter 2014; Potter et al 2015, to appear; Kubota & Levine 2016, a.o.), so that much of the
literature on gapping; namely either low-coordination (cf. Johnson 1996/2004, 2009; Coppock
2001; Toosarvandani 2016, a.o.) or high-coordination (cf. Jayaseelan 1990; Gengel 2007, 2013,
a.o.) fails to account for scope facts, as one of the scope readings remains unaccounted for at the
outset, and it is suggestive that each scope interpretation results from a different syntactic structure.
Goal. In this paper I will show that there are indeed two types of gapping in Spanish, and I will
argue that each type of gapping has different syntactic and prosodic properties, supporting thus the
heterogenous approach to Spanish gapping.
Evidence for two types of gapping. Examples in (1) illustrate gapping in Spanish with ‘SVO &
SO’ order (cf. Brucart 1987, 1999) which have different scope readings, depending on the presence
of a prosodic pause, represented by comma between the two conjuncts in coordination.
(1)
a.
b.
Yo no puedo comer marisco, y María carne de cerdo.
I not can.1.sg eat
seafood and Mary pork meat
(i) ‘I can’t eat seafood, and Mary can’t eat pork meat’
(ii) *‘It cannot be the case that I eat seafood and Mary eats pork meat’
Yo no puedo comer marisco y María carne de cerdo.
I not can.1.sg eat
seafood and Mary pork meat
(i) *‘I can’t eat seafood, and Mary can’t eat pork meat’
(ii) ‘It cannot be the case that I eat seafood and Mary eats pork meat’
In addition, the example in (1a) has the falling intonation contour right before the object of each
conjunct [S ↗ V ↘ O], & [↗ S ↘ O] (cf. Hartmann 2000), which corresponds to the focus
pattern and the Nuclear Stress Rule in Spanish (Zubizarreta 1998), whereas the example in (1b)
does not have such pattern; the intonation contour falls for the first time in the object of the second
conjunct [S ↗ V (*↘) O & S ↘ O]. Furthermore, the previous literature on Spanish gapping
completely disregards the existence of gapping sentences with ‘VSO & SO’ order, where the
subject-verb agreement can be in either non-cumulative (2a) or cumulative (2b). As expected from
the fact that there is no prosodic pause between the two conjuncts, only the wide-scope reading is
possible in both cases.
(2)
a.
b.
No puedo comer yo marisco y María carne de cerdo.
not can.1.sg eat
I seafood and Mary pork meat
No podemos comer yo marisco y María carne de cerdo.
not can.1.pl eat
I seafood and Mary pork meat
(i) *‘I can’t eat seafood, and Mary can’t eat pork meat’
(ii) ‘It cannot be the case that I eat seafood and Mary eats pork meat’
I will call sentences like (1a) “Type-I” gapping and sentences like (1b) and (2) “Type-II” gapping,
respectively. In the case of Type-II gapping with cumulative agreement (cf. (2b)), interestingly, a
‘cumulative’ overt subject pronoun can appear preverbally (3a) but not postverbally (3b).
(3)
a.
b.
Nosotros pediremos yo besugo
y ella merluza.
we
order.1.pl I sea bream and she hake
*Pediremos nosotros yo besugo
y ella merluza.
order.1.pl we
I sea bream and she hake
There is also a clear contrast in the possibility of having the subject of the first conjunct in preverbal
position, depending on whether the verb shows up in cumulative or non-cumulative agreement. If
verb agreement is not cumulative, the subject of the first conjunct can appear either postverbally
(4a) or preverbally (4b). But if the verb appears in cumulative, the subject of the first conjunct can
appear only postverbally, as shown by the contrast between (5a) and (5b)
(4)
a.
(5)
b.
a.
b.
No puedo pedir yo marisco y ella carne de cerdo.
not can.1.sg order I seafood and she pork meat
Yoi no puedo pedir ti marisco y ella carne de cerdo.
No podemos pedir yo marisco y ella carne de cerdo.
not can.1.pl order I seafood and she pork meat
*Yoi no podemos pedir ti marisco y ella carne de cerdo.
Two source structures for gapping. To account for the contrasts shown above, I propose that
Type-I gapping involves high-coordination plus PF-deletion (6), whereas Type-II gapping
contains low-coordination, which can be analyzed either by PF-deletion (7a) or ATB-movement
(7b), depending on the (non-)cumulative agreement on the verb.
(6)
(7)
a.
b.
… & [TP Maríai [T´ [no puede [comerj]] [vP ti [VP tj carne de cerdo]]]]
[no puedo comeri [vP yo [VP ti marisco]] & [vP María [VP comer carne de cerdo]]]
[no podemos comeri [vP yo [VP ti marisco]] & [vP Maríai [VP ti carne de cerdo]]]
In this way, we can capture scope facts shown in (1) and (2) in a principled way; namely from
different source structures. The ‘hybrid’ analysis proposed in (7) is also motivated to account for
the contrast shown in (8), where the lexical verb of the second conjunct can be pronounced when
the auxiliary verb appears in singular (8a), whereas when the auxiliary verb appears in plural, as
an instance of cumulative agreement, the verb of the second conjunct cannot be pronounced
anymore (8b).
(8)
a.
b.
No puedo pedir yo marisco y tú (pedir) carne de cerdo.
No podemos pedir yo marisco y tú (*pedir) carne de cerdo.
Since the example in (8a) would be totally unexpected if ATB-movement were involved therein,
it must involve the derivation shown in (7a). By contrast, the example in (8b) is predicted if ATBmovement is involved therein. As regards the contrast between the example in (4) and the one in
(5), the present analysis suggests that the former (cf. (1b)) has the derivation shown in (7a) plus
subject raising to [Spec,TP] as an instance of A-movement which is immune to the CSC (Johnson
1996/2004), contrary to A’-movement. Given this situation, the ungrammaticality of (5b) calls for
the “Spec-Head” Agreement (cf. Chomsky 1986, Mahajan 1989, Sportiche 1990, 1998; Koopman
& Sportiche 1991; Koopman 1992, 2003, 2006; Adger 2016) since the Agree (Chomsky 2000,
2001) alone does not elucidate the contrast in question; i.e. the ungrammaticality of (5b) remains
mysterious if the agreement features on the verb only depend on the Agree operation between
Probe (Tº) and Goal (subject), being subject raising triggered by some other feature. Thus, in (5b),
subject raising is ruled out by the “Spec-Head” Agreement because when the subject of the first
conjunct moves to [Spec,TP], we have crash of the features between Tº and the raised subject.
References. Brucart, J. M. 1987. La elisión sintáctica en español. Bellaterra: Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona; Johnson, K. 2009. Gapping is not (VP-) ellipsis. Linguistic Inquiry 40:2,
289–328; Potter et al. A Two-Source Hypothesis for Gapping. Natural Language and Linguistic
Theory (to appear).