Identity conditions on ellipsis in Italian Sign Language (LIS)
Carlo Cecchetto (University of Milan-Bicocca), Carlo Geraci (CNRS, Institut Jean-Nicod),
Mirko Santoro (Institut Jean-Nicod)
A. To date, very little work has been devoted to ellipsis in sign languages. In particular, although, some
work (i.e. Schlenker, Lamberton & Santoro. 2013, Linguistics & Philosophy) considers elision as a
control test, no comprehensive study on ellipsis licensing exists. We start filling this gap by analyzing a
construction in LIS (Italian Sign Language), in which a constituent can go un-uttered if a suitable
antecedent is present. This elliptical construction involves typically, although not uniquely, the use of an
adverbial sign glossed here as SAME, meaning “too/as well”. We illustrate this construction in (1) and (2).
We use the standard convention of indicating signs in capital letters.
(1) DINING-ROOM GIANNI VASE BREAK, MARIO SAME KITCHEN
“Gianni broke a vase in the dining room and Mario did (so) in the kitchen”
(2) DINING-ROOM GIANNI VASE BREAK, MARIO SAME
“Gianni broke a vase in the dining room and Mario did so, too”
In (1) the elided constituent corresponds to VASE BREAK, while in (2) it corresponds to the entire VP
DINING-ROOM VASE BREAK (notice that the antecedent VP is a discontinuous constituent in 2, a fact that
we will discuss). The elliptical construction may also involve the use of the sign YES (cf. 3) or NOT (cf.
4), although for simplicity in this paper we will focus only on the examples containing the sign SAME.
(3) DINING-ROOM GIANNI VASE BREAK. PIERO NOT
“Gianni broke a vase in the dining room while Piero did not”
(4) DINING-ROOM GIANNI VASE BREAK NOT. PIERO YES
“Gianni did not break a vase in the dining room but Piero did”
The size of ellipsis can vary. Not only a subpart of the VP may undergo ellipsis as shown in (1). A bigger
constituent than the VP may also undergo ellipsis: if a modal or the auxiliary for future is present in the
antecedent clause, it can go un-uttered in the elliptical clause, as shown by the grammaticality of the a.
sentences in (5) and (6). This indicates that the ellipsis site can be as big as the functional category
headed by the auxiliary or by the modal. But the ellipsis site does not need to be that big, as shown by the
grammaticality of the b. sentences.
(5)
a. GIANNI BOOK BUY MUST. MARIA SAME
b. GIANNI BOOK BUY MUST. MARIA MUST SAME
“Gianni must buy a book and also Maria must”
(6)
a. GIANNI BEAN-EAT FUT. PIERO SAME
b. GIANNI BEAN-EAT FUT. PIERO FUT SAME
“Gianni will eat beans and Piero will too ”
Interestingly, it seems that the size of the ellipsis cannot be as big as the entire TP, as suggested by the
fact that (7) is ungrammatical.
(7) *GIANNI VASE BREAK. LAMP SAME
(7), if grammatical, might be analyzed as a case of TP ellipsis (sluicing-like) where the direct object
LAMP, being topicalized, has escaped the ellipsis site. Having sketched the basic properties of the
construction under investigation we now move to its licensing (identity) conditions.
B. In order to investigate the identity requirement for ellipsis, we will capitalize on a modality specific
feature of sign languages: adverbs can stand alone (as normally do in spoken languages) or can be
incorporated into the verb root. We take the adverb QUICKLY as a representative. It can be incorporated
in the verb EAT, as in in (8), or can be uttered as a separate lexical item, as in in (9). When QUICKLY is
incorporated, the movement of the dominant hand towards the mouth of the signer, characteristic of the
sign EAT, is repeated and is articulated more rapidly than in the citation form of the verb.
(8) MARIO MEAT EAT-QUICKLY
“Mario eats meat quickly”
(9) MARIO MEAT EAT QUICKLY
“Mario eats meat quickly”
C. There is evidence that ellipsis is not licensed by identity in meaning alone, but by identity in form (at
least up to a certain extent). If identity in meaning sufficed, sentences like (10) and (11) should be on a
par with each other, since the antecedent clause in (10) and (11) expresses the same meaning, despite
the fact that (10) contains an independent sign for QUICKLY while in (11) QUICKLY is incorporated.
(10) MARIO MEAT EAT QUICKLY. GIANNI SAME SLOWLY
“Mario eats meat quickly. Gianni does that slowly”
(11) *MARIO MEAT EAT-QUICKLY. GIANNI SAME SLOWLY
However, (10) is acceptable while (11) is sharply ungrammatical. Notice that, if identity in form is
required, there is an easy explanation for why (11) is out: since QUICKLY is incorporated into the verb
in the antecedent clause, if the ellipsis site is identical in form to its antecedent, there is a clash in
meaning (one cannot eat slowly and quickly at the same time). In (10) there is no clash because the
ellipsis site is identical to the verb EAT alone.
D. Adverb incorporation also suggests that identity in meaning is a necessary, although not a sufficient,
condition. Sentence (12), in which the adverb is incorporated into the verb, is ambiguous. According to
one reading, Gianni eats beans quickly (but he does not necessarily eats a big quantity of beans). This is
the “speed reading”. According to the second reading, Gianni must eat a lot of beans. This is the
“amount reading” (if the adverb is not incorporated, only the “speed reading” is selected). Crucially, in
(13) the reading that obtains in the antecedent clause must obligatorily obtain in the SAME clause. A
semantic parallelism that goes beyond identity in form seems to be required here.
(12) GIANNI BEANS EAT-QUICKLY
(13) GIANNI BEANS EAT-QUICKLY. PIERO SAME
E. In the second part of the talk we will show that 'vehicle change' is present in the LIS ellipsis
construction. The relevant examples are (14b) and (14c), which are sentences uttered after (14a) has
been uttered (this introductory sentence makes sure that loci in the signing space for Gianni, Maria and
Piero have already been set when the test sentences are produced):
(14) a. IX-1 GIANNI MARIA PIERO MEET …
‘I met Gianni, Maria and Piero'
b. * …. GIANNI MARIAi PRAISE. IX-3i SAME
‘Gianni praised Mariai. *Shei did too”
c. …..GIANNI MARIAi PRAISE. IX-3i THINK PIERO SAME
“Gianni praised Maria and she thinks that Piero did too”
(14b) is a canonical Principle C violation under the assumption that the ellipsis site contains the Rexpression MARIA at LF (the ellipsis site is struck for convenience):
(14b’) GIANNI MARIAi PRAISE. *IX-3i MARIAi PRAISE SAME
However, (14c) is grammatical under the reading “Gianni praised Maria and she thinks that Piero
praised her (=Maria) as well”. This reading requires vehicle change, where the proper name MARIA is
converted into the third person pronoun IX-3 in the ellipsis site (without vehicle change, 14c would be a
Principle C violation, much like 14b):
(14c’) GIANNI MARIAi PRAISE. IX-3i THINK PIERO IX-3i PRAISE SAME
F. Finally, we will describe the distribution of strict and sloppy readings in the construction under
consideration. In a nutshell, we could detect the presence of both sloppy and strict readings where
expected based on previous work on spoken languages, with an interesting twist that seems to be related
to a modality specific property, namely the possibility of role shift. So, the elliptical clause in (15) is
ambiguous between the strict and the sloppy reading.
(15) GIANNIi SAY HEi MARIA KISS. PIEROj SAME
“Gianni said that he kissed Maria. Piero did too”
However, the minimally different sentence (16), in which role shift has taken place in the antecedent,
admits only the sloppy reading. As we will discuss, this is expected under current semantic approaches
to role shift in sign languages.
(16) GIANNIi SAY IX-1_rs MARIA KISS. PIEROj SAME
G. We acknowledge that we just started scratching the surface of the investigation of the properties of
ellipsis in the visuo-spatial modality. Still, our preliminary exploration suffices to show that sign
languages replicate the complex pattern which is presented by the phenomenon in spoken languages.
On the one hand, identity in form seems to be required, as shown by the strong contrast between (10)
and (11). However, if identity in form were really strictly required in (14c), this sentence should trigger
a Principle C violation under the relevant reading, contrary to facts. The solution lies in a deeper
understanding in what “identity in form” means for the different levels of analysis. We hope that the
investigation of language in another modality will contribute original evidence to this debate.