Agreement Switch in Verb-Echo Answers: Evidence for Distributed Ellipsis

Document Type

Journal Article

Role

Author

Published In

Linguistic Inquiry

Volume

57

Issue

3

First Page

493

Last Page

535

Publication Date

7-6-2026

Abstract

In this article, we claim that syntactic objects undergoing ellipsis can be targeted by both narrow syntactic and PF operations. We base this conclusion on experimental evidence from the interaction between single conjunct agreement and verb-echo answers in South Slavic, which we show to be derived via verb-stranding VP-ellipsis. Adopting the view that Vocabulary Insertion replaces Q-variables on lexical heads (Halle 1991) and that ellipsis is a syntactic operation that deletes Q-variables (Saab 2022), we demonstrate that constituents properly included in the ellipsis site can undergo Internal Merge in the narrow syntax and can participate in PF processes from the derived position. The interaction between ellipsis, Internal Merge, and Agree-Copy that accounts for these patterns of data follows naturally within the Distributed Ellipsis approach.

Keywords

ellipsis, single conjunct agreement, verb-echo answers, Q-variables, Distributed Ellipsis

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