Sprouting and Alternations in Ellipsis - Gradient [un]acceptability

Abstract

This thesis looks at what argument alternations, such as locative, dative and voice, and sprouting can reveal about the identity condition on ellipsis. The collected speaker judgements in this thesis indicate gradience, not only between alternations and sprouting, but also between different alternations under ellipsis, and between sprouting in different constructions. It then goes on to argue that three of the existing theories, those by Chung (2005), Merchant (2013) and Chung (2013), cannot account for some of the behaviour found. Then a new theory is proposed which can better account for the gradience, but still has issues. In order to account for these issues, a rough revision is made of this new theory, before it is concluded that alternations under ellipsis and sprouting indicate that the identity condition on ellipsis should account for gradience.