The In-situ Analysis of Why-stripping

초록

In this paper, I argue that why-stripping is better explained under the in-situ analysis of ellipsis. The previous focus-movement approach (Yoshida, Nakao, and Ortega-Santos 2015) demonstrates interesting distributions that differ from other ellipsis phenomena, such as sluicing, fragment answers and stripping, and suggests that why be externally merged to SpecIntP and a focus phrase move to SpecFocP escaping out of TP-deletion. Although the focus-movement analysis covers a good amount of empirical phenomena for why-stripping, I will demonstrate that it still faces both theoretical and empirical challenges, including some focus remnants unable to undergo focus movement, obligatory clausal deletion, and availability of island repair. I propose an alternative analysis, dubbed an in-situ approach, where a focused constituent remains overt in the ellipsis site, but its feature undergoes movement to the left-periphery. I argue that the current approach offers wider coverage of why-stripping phenomena and resolves challenges posed to the previous focus-movement approach.

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