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REVIEWS - Negation in Gapping. By Sophie Repp. (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 22.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009. Pp. xi, 266. Paperback. £24.99. $45.

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Negation in Gapping. By Sophie Repp. (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 22.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009. Pp. xi, 266. Paperback. £24.99. $45.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2010

John R. te Velde
John R. te Velde*
Affiliation:
Oklahoma State University
*
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, 309 Gundersen, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078-1054, USA, [john.te_velde@okstate.edu]
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REVIEWS
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 2010, pp. 193 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 2010

1. Introduction

Repp's focus on a subarea of Gapping (itself a subarea of coordination) might strike some as too narrow. They might be right about the syntax that is covered, but not about the semantics and pragmatics, particularly as these relate to negation in Gapping. The rarely equaled breadth and depth of Repp's review of the literature on Gapping recommends her monograph as a survey. Whether it should have delved more deeply into the syntax of Gapping is a point I return to below in the evaluation section.

2. Synopsis

In chapter 1, Repp lays out the main problem of the book: how to account for three possible interpretations of a Gapping construction that has a negative marker in the first conjunct and an elided verb in the second:

  1. (1)

    1. a. Pete hasn't got a video and John __ a DVD.

      = [It is not the case that Pete has a video] and [it is not the case that John has a DVD].

    2. b. Pete didn't clean the whole flat and John __ laze around all afternoon.

      = It is not the case that [Pete cleaned the whole flat and John lazed around all afternoon].

    3. c. Pete wasn't called by Vanessa but John __ by Jessie.

      = [It is not the case that Pete was called by Vanessa] but [it is the case that John was called by Jessie].

    4. d. Pete wasn't called by Vanessa and John only __ by Jessie.

      = [It is not the case that Pete was called by Vanessa] and [it is the case that John was only called by Jessie].

As Repp points out, there are three readings of the negation in the above:

  1. (2)

    1. a. distributed scope: (¬A) ∧ (¬B)

    2. b. wide scope: ¬(A ∧ B)

    3. c. narrow scope: (¬A) ∧ (B)

The factors that influence the interpretation of the negation are, as Repp states, “manifold:” intonation, content of the gaps, the type of coordi-nating conjunction, contextual requirements, and the kind of negation involved. Her data come mostly from German and English, with comparisons to Dutch, Japanese, Polish, Russian, and Slovak.

Repp assumes for copying in Gapping a version of sideward movement, as proposed by Nunes (1995, 2004), that targets only PF-visible features and not functional elements; thus, certain scopal proper-ties that are dependent on functional elements dominating both conjuncts are accounted for.

Chapter 2 is devoted to distributed scope readings of negation (see 2a) when the main verb (only) is gapped. Repp explains that because sideward movement copies material from the first conjunct after it has been spelled out, it generates an “impoverished numeration” for conjunct 2. The crucial syntactic points of this copying process are: i) the first conjunct has a separate numeration from the second, and ii) only elements that are realized in PF actually occur in the numeration of the gapped conjunct.

This proposal, when combined with the well-defended assumption that the negation marker not/n't in English is a head that projects a NegP, whereas German nicht is an adverb that adjoins to vP, is able to account for significant differences between the two languages with respect to distributed scope readings. Thus, in English a gapped finite verb can easily be interpreted with clausal negation, but this is very difficult or even impossible in German, as seen in the comparison of 3a and 3b.

  1. (3)

    1. a. Max didn't read the book and Martha the magazine.

    2. b.

Chapter 3 explores narrow scope readings when the negation is restricted to the first conjunct. For this, Repp argues, the right contrast is required; she formulates the Principle of Balanced Contrast (PBC)—a refinement of Lang's (1984) principle—which states that both conjuncts must “make the same kind of contribution to a common discourse topic” (p. 83). Contrastive but plays a crucial role, so in 4 the second conjunct is positive—while the first is negative—because of contrastive but.

  1. (4) Pete wasn't called by Vanessa but John by Jessie.

Repp concludes that only if we assume that but interacts with the infor-mation structure of the coordination can all the facts be accounted for. The PBC is also demonstrated in constructions that contain and with only a gapped auxiliary, and focus particles like only, not only, and even.

Chapter 4 investigates negation on the speech act level, when it takes widest scope. Repp calls this illocutionary negation and claims that it is situated outside the coordination. It is associated with corrections and denials with but of the sort in 5.

  1. (5) John wasn't called by Jess but Mary by Benjamin.

Repp follows other work in assuming that there are two functional phrases, Pol2P between IP and CP, and Pol1P between VP and IP. Accordingly, there are two Spec positions into which the remnant in a corrective- but-structure can move, depending on the focus (the remnant not shown):

  1. (6) [Pol2P SpecPol2 … [Pol1P SpecPol1 … VP]]

Repp shows that the position where the negation is allowed to be in corrections with contrastive but is not fixed. It must meet just one requirement: the negation must c-command at least one of the correlates.

The second of the two sections of chapter 4 deals with wide scope readings that involve illocutionary rather than (just) propositional neg-ation. Repp proposes that illocutionary negation can be represented syntactically as a Strength projection in the C-domain of the clause (contra the original approach to verum focus proposed in Höhle 1988, 1992). She argues that the wide scope readings in Gapping have one ForceP and one StrengthP that dominate both conjuncts; thus, the negation is situated above the coordination. In her proposal, the differ-ence between wide and distributed scope readings of conjuncts follows from earlier work by López & Winkler (2003) and Winkler (2005) who assume that wide-scope readings consist of small conjuncts under one illocutionary negation, while distributed-scope readings result from propositional negation.

In chapter 5, Repp explores finiteness in Gapping and challenges Hartmann's (2000) claim that Gapping “elides the assertion.” She formulates the following semantic-pragmatic definition of Gapping:

  1. (7) Gapping is the coordination of two sentences where the elliptic conjunct copies the anchoring of the proposition to the factual world from its non-elliptic antecedent.

So in place of “assertion” we have an “anchoring of the proposition to the factual world,” that is, there is a pragmatic component that is not obviously present in Hartmann's definition. The head that “expresses” this anchoring is the finite verb, typically the sole target of deletion in Gapping. The anchoring occurs through the encoding of finiteness in the C-system, which c-commands (and thus binds) heads in the I-system responsible for tense, mood, and aspect. Of particular interest to Repp is the semantic motivation behind this syntactic relation.

Following the argument that finite verbs and complementizers have many properties in common and that complementizers must be elided in cases of nonfinite verb Gapping (see 8 below), Repp concludes that Gapping is not dependent on the elision of the finite verb after all; it depends on the proper anchoring. Repp arrives at this conclusion in the context of a rather extended discussion of the C-system and the dis-placement of ForceP and FinP.

3. Evaluation

This study is very well researched, citing and summarizing an impressive number of works. In that respect, it provides an outstanding introduction to Gapping and related phenomena. In contrast to this, the book offers a relatively modest number of new proposals and insights. But this is not a glaring weakness of the study: the thoroughness of the background and discussion more than makes up for it, especially since the new proposals are often very complex and far-reaching; for example, the proposal of chapter 5 just discussed.

Although a thorough discussion of the new proposals and their potential problematic areas requires far more space than I have here, in what follows I attempt to provide a fair outline of such a discussion. First, approaching Gapping via a copying mechanism is a good idea, as I have argued elsewhere (te Velde 2006). However, just how this copying proceeds in the narrow syntax to get the required results is left un-resolved in this study. For instance, how are just the features required for the gapped conjunct targeted and copied in narrow syntax? There are symmetry requirements that must be met so that, for instance, the subjects of both conjuncts have matching semantic and syntactic features, without which Gapping is ill-formed: *The linguist read from his book, and the book read very easily. The author states that “only elements that are realized at PF actually occur in the numeration” (p. 71) of the gapped conjunct. Then on page 73 she states, “[I]n gapping sideward movement occurs after the phonology of the first conjunct has been shipped off to PF. This means that material to be copied from the first conjunct comes without phonology.” This procedure gets us the gaps, but it also leaves open the question of how the rest of the second conjunct—which must be pronounced—is derived; that is, it cannot be by sideward movement, because this would render the entire conjunct silent/not pronounced (“without phonology”).

Repp chose to focus primarily on the semantic and pragmatic aspects of Gapping. Consequently, the syntax-LF interface is crucial, but the LF-representations Repp uses do not follow directly from the narrow syntax; a rather rich set of mechanisms and constraints is required, most obviously those required to make possible the non-simultaneous spellout of conjuncts that have numerous symmetry requirements. How are these guaranteed at PF and LF?

Repp consistently states that a Gapping construction has two con-juncts. In fact, any number of gapped conjuncts can occur. How does copying as sideward movement proceed with the third, fourth, fifth conjunct and so on?

There is much in chapter 5 that is on the one hand insightful but on the other problematic, and some of it is based on data that can be—and have been—analyzed differently. For instance, in 8 Repp assumes there is a gap (strikethrough).

  1. (8)

Repp argues on the basis of 8 that because the complementizer has to be deleted, it has properties of a finite verb. This is important for her claim that both finite verbs and complementizers play a role in anchoring the proposition of the clause, and that this anchoring makes the elision of the (non)finite verb possible. But she does not mention the absence of the requirement that a finite verb must delete in: Hans kann gut schwimmen, und Uwe kann auch ‘Hans can swim well, and Uwe can too.’ Furthermore, both the English and German versions of 8 can be analyzed without any gap in the second conjunct.

These shortcomings aside, this study provides an excellent review of the literature on Gapping and is thus good reading as an introduction. But it does more than that: it takes the discussion to a higher level—the level of information structure—and thereby provides something lacking in the literature. For these reasons I recommend it to students and seasoned linguists alike.

References

REFERENCES

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