NP-Ellipsis Patterns in Spanish Binominals: A New Empirical Observation and its Theoretical Implications
Abstract
In this contribution, I present new evidence against any attempt to unify pseudo-partitive/quantificational and qualitative binominals (e.g., un grupo/montón de estudiantes ‘a group/lot of students’, una mierda de departamento ‘a shit of an apartment’). The observation is that pseudo-partitive/ quantificational nouns, unlike expressive nouns, license NP-ellipsis of the de-phrase (e.g., A: Vinieron estudiantes? ‘Did students come?’, B: Un montón (de estudiantes) ‘a lot (of students)’). Assuming that the codas of pseudo-partitive and quantificational nouns are NPs realized as primeval genitives (Pesetsky 2013), NP-ellipsis of the usual type is correctly predicted under wellknown licensing and identity conditions. In turn, the de-phrase in qualitative binominals is the specifier of an Equative Phrase, which relates the de-NP to an empty nominal ranging over properties (Saab 2022a). As I show, NP-ellipsis is banned in such environments for principled reasons. Thus, the ellipsis pattern is accounted for if the relevant binominals have a different structural source for genitive marking.
Keywords
pseudo-partitives, quantificational binominals, qualitative binominals, nominal ellipsis, genitive case, SpanishReferences
Alexiadou, Artemis, Haegeman, Liliane & Stavrou, Melita. 2007. Noun phrase in the generative perspective. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110207491
Baker, Mark C. & Collins, Chris. 2006. Linkers and the internal structure of VP. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 24: 307-354. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-005-2235-1
Bennis, Hans, Corver, Norbert & Dikken, Marcel den. 1997. Predication in nominal phrases. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 1: 85-117. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009780124314
Benz, Johanna, Mendes, Gesoel & Salzmann, Martin. 2024. Against evacuation movement in NP-Ellipsis. Proceedings of the 47th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference 30(1): 21-30.
Brucart, José María. 1997. Concordancia ad sensum y partitividad en español. En Manuel Almeida & Josefa Dorta (eds.). Contribuciones al estudio de la lingüística hispánica. Homenaje al profesor Ramón Trujillo (Tomo 1), 157-184. Tenerife: Montesinos.
Collins, Chris. 2003. The internal structure of vP in Ju|'hoansi and ‡Hoan. Studia Linguistica 57: 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9582.00095
Corver, Norbert. 1998. Predicate movement in pseudopartitive constructions. In Artemis Alexiadou & Chris Wilder (eds.). Possessors, predicates and movement in the determiner phrase, 215-258. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Demonte, Violeta & Pérez-Jiménez, Isabel. 2015. Construcciones partitivas y pseudopartivas en español: Concordancia híbrida y variación en la interficie sintaxis-semántica. In Esther Hernández & Pedro Martín Butragueño (eds.). Variación y diversidad lingüística: Hacia una teoría convergente, 397-464. México: El Colegio de México, Colección Estudios de Lingüística y literatura LXIII.
Dikken, Marcel den. 2006. Relators and linkers: The syntax of predication, predicate inversion, and copulas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/5873.001.0001
Dikken, Marcel den & Singhapreecha, Pornsiri. 2004. Complex noun phrases and linkers. Syntax 7: 1-54. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1368-0005.2004.00064.x
Di Tullio, Ángela & Saab, Andrés. 2006. Dos clases de epítetos en el español: sus propiedades referenciales y distribución sintáctica. In Proceedings of the XIV Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de América Latina (ALFAL). Monterrey, México.
Eguren, Luis. 2010. Contrastive focus and nominal ellipsis in Spanish. Lingua 120(2): 435-457. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2009.05.004
Embick, David & Noyer, Rolf. 2001. Movement operations after syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 32(4): 555-595. https://doi.org/10.1162/002438901753373005
Español-Echevarría, Manuel. 1998. Two aspects of the sentential syntax of N/A of a N DP’s: Predicate raising and subject licensing. In Armin Schwegler, Bernard Tranel & Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria (eds.). Romance Linguistics: Theoretical Perspectives, 67-80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.160.07esp
Estigarribia, Bruno. 2017. The semantics of Spanish Clitic Left Dislocations with epithets. Probus 29(2): 287-321. https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2017-0002
Estigarribia, Bruno. 2020. A biclausal account of Clitic Left-Dislocations with epithets in Rioplatense Spanish. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1): 33. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1008
Giannakidou, Anastasia & Stavrou, Melita. 1999. Nominalization and ellipsis in the Greek DP. The Linguistic Review 16: 295-331. https://doi.org/10.1515/tlir.1999.16.4.295
González-Rivera, Melvin. 2011. On the internal structure of Spanish attributive qualitative binominal constructions. In Luis A. Ortiz-López (ed.). Selected Proceedings of the 13th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 275-285. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Gutzmann, Daniel. 2015. Use-conditional meaning. studies in multidimensional semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723820.001.0001
Gutzmann, Daniel. 2019. The grammar of expressivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198812128.001.0001
Hankamer, Jorge & Sag, Ivan. 1976. Deep and surface anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 7(3): 391-426. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177933
Halle, Morris & Marantz, Alec. 1993. Distributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Ken Hale & Samuel Keyser (eds.). The view from Building 20, 111-176. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Heim, Irene & Angelika Kratzer. 1998. Semantics in generative grammar. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Kayne, Richard. 2005. Movement and silence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195179163.001.0001
Kornfeld, Laura & Saab, Andrés. 2004. Nominal ellipsis and morphological structure in Spanish. In Bok-Bennema, Reineke, Bart Hollebrandse, Brigitte Kampers-Manhe & Petra Sleeman (eds.). Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002, 183-198. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.256.11kor
Lakoff, George. 1970. Global rules. Language 46(3): 627-639. https://doi.org/10.2307/412310
Lipták, Anikó & Saab, Andrés. 2010. Nominal ellipsis and the stranded affix filter. Talk given at Nijmegen University, October 2010.
McCready, Elin. 2010. Varieties of conventional implicatures. Semantics and Pragmatics 3: 1-57. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.3.8
McFadden, Thomas. 2004. The position of morphological case in the derivation: A study on the syntax-morphology interface. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
Merchant, Jason. 2001. The syntax of silence: Sluicing, islands, and the theory of ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199243730.001.0001
Merchant, Jason. 2004. Fragments and ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy 27: 661-738. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-005-7378-3
Merchant, Jason. 2014. Gender mismatches under nominal ellipsis. Lingua 151: 9-32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2014.01.008
Milner, Jean-Claude. 1978. De la syntaxe à l’interpretation. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2002. Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.46
Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2003a. Empty nouns. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21: 381-432. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023384924981
Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2003b. One, Empty nouns and theta assignment. Linguistic Inquiry 34(2): 281-292. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/42194
Payne, John, Pullum, Geoffrey K., Scholz, Barbara C. & Berlage, Eva. 2013. Anaphoric one and its implications. Language 89(4): 794-829. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.2013.0071
Pérez-Jiménez, Isabel & Demonte, Violeta. 2017. Agreement and interpretation of partitive constructions in Spanish: The dual nature of nominal features. Probus 29(2): 355-395. https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2017-0003
Pescarini, Diego. 2024. L’ellissi del SN in italiano. Talk given at the workshop Ellissi e categorie vuote, Firenze, November 11.
Pesetsky, David. 2013. Russian case morphology and the syntactic categories. Cambridge, MA: MIT press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262019729.001.0001
Potts, Christopher. 2005. The logic of conventional implicature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199273829.001.0001
Saab, Andrés. 2004a. El dominio de la elipsis nominal en español. Identidad estricta e inserción tardía. Master Thesis, National University of Comahue.
Saab, Andrés. 2004b. Epítetos y elipsis nominal en español. Revista de la Sociedad Argentina de Lingüística (RASAL): 31-51.
Saab, Andrés. 2006. Concordancia ad sensum y elipsis nominal en español: un análisis morfosintáctico. Revista de Lengua y Literatura 34: 45-63.
Saab, Andrés. 2008. Hacia una teoría de la identidad en la elipsis. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Buenos Aires.
Saab, Andrés. 2010. (Im)possible deletions in the Spanish DP. Iberia 2(2): 45-83.
Saab, Andrés. 2019. Nominal ellipsis. In Tanja Temmerman & Jeroen van Craenenbroeck (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Ellipsis, 526-561. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198712398.013.26
Saab, Andrés. 2022a. Introducing expressives through equations. Implications for the theory of nominal predication in Romance. In John R. Starr, Juhyae Kim & Burak Öney (eds.). Proceeding of SALT 32, 356-383. https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v1i0.5330
Saab, Andrés. 2022b. Propositional equations through expressive selection. Cadernos de Squibs 8(2): 100-118.
Saab, Andrés. 2022c. Grammatical silences from syntax to morphology. A model for the timing of ellipsis. In Güniz, Güliz & Anikó Lipták (eds.). The derivational timing of ellipsis, 170-224. Oxford: Oxford University press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198849490.003.0005
Saab, Andrés. 2022d. Identifying empty nouns. Evidence from binominal constructions in Spanish. Talk given at the Workshop Syntax and Discourse Conditions of NP-Deletion, German Linguistics at the University of Cologne, Germany, February 9th-10th (online).
Saab, Andrés 2024. Agree, agreement dissociation and subject ellipsis. Towards a new characterization of the null subject parameter. Probus 36(2): 217-250. https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2024-2011
Saab, Andrés & Lipták, Anikó. 2016. Movement and deletion after syntax. Ellipsis by inflection reconsidered. Studia Linguistica 70(1): 66-108. https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12039
Saab, Andrés & Carranza, Fernando. 2021. Dimensiones del significado. Una introducción a la semántica formal. Buenos Aires: SADAF.
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1977. Some remarks on noun phrase structure. In Peter W. Culicover, Thomas Wasow & Adrian Akmajian (eds.). Formal syntax, 285-316. New York: Academic Press.
Sleeman, Petra, 1993. Noun ellipsis in French. Probus 5: 271-295. https://doi.org/10.1515/prbs.1993.5.3.271
Sleeman, Petra. 1996. Licensing empty nouns in French. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Amsterdam.
Suñer Gratacós, Avel·lina. 1990. La predicación secundaria en español. Doctoral Dissertation, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.
Ticio, Emma. 2003. On the structure of DPs. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Connecticut.
Villalba, Xavier. 2007. True and spurious articles in Germanic and Romance. Cuadernos de Lingüística del I. U. I. Ortega y Gasset 14: 121-134.
Published
How to Cite
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2026 Andrés Saab
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
