A hybrid type of ellipsis in Romanian

Abstract

The paper presents a type of ellipsis similar to stripping and split conjuncts, yet irreducible to either of them. One aim of the analysis is to document the existence of this distinct ellipsis type within the class of constructions where the elided constituent is a verb or a verb phrase. It is argued that the main generative strategies, namely, deletion and null anaphora cannot be applied to this ellipsis type in order to account for it. Instead, the study shows that an approach which takes the asymmetry syntax-semantics of this construction as basic is much more successful in explaining the nature of this type of ellipsis. This alternative approach is the one offered by the HPSG framework.