Linguistics Seminar Talk - Aniko Liptak

Ellipsis in synthetic adjectival compounds
Anikó Lipták, Leiden University
(with Crit Cremers, Leiden University)

In this talk, I describe a novel ellipsis phenomenon that deletes the second part of synthetic adjectival compounds (indicated by ___), stranding the emphatic left part in the process.

1. Deze    lift        is          zeven-persoon-s,           en         die        acht____.         (Dutch)

this       lift        is          seven-person-Adj         and       that       eight

2. Ez a lift             hét-személy-es, az a lift nyolc ____.                  (Hungarian)

this the lift        seven-person-Adj         that the lift        eight

‘This lift can carry seven people, and that one can carry eight.’

We refer to this phenomenon as “left part stranding” (LPS for short) and show that it occurs both in Dutch and Hungarian in very similar ways and can affect the second part of a synthetic adjectival compound with a derivational affix that attaches to a noun.
In addition to the fact that LPS curiously violates Lexical Integrity and cannot be classified as any known exception to this condition (such as coordination reduction, eliminating either the first part of a compound in a second coordinand, or the second part of a compound in a first coordinand, see Booij 1985), LPS is also curious in that it has some unexpected properties, among which that it only occurs in compounds that function as clausal predicates and not as attributive modifiers of nouns.
After inventorising the morphosyntactic properties of LPS, I argue that the data should be treated as ordinary ellipsis, with repercussions for the analysis of synthetic adjectival compounds.