News from the further reaches of Ellipsilandia
Our Young Eric has mischievously tossed us a playful instance of Verb
Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) in
his
latest posting:
All completely unnecessary, if you ask me (though, of course, nobody
did ___ or is ___).
Both
did and
is are missing their complement VPs
(indicated by the underscores above), which we can supply as base-form
ask me (as the complement of
supportive
DO) and present participial
asking me (in the progressive
construction), respectively. The antecedent VP is the
present-tense
ask me (bolded
above). Base-form omitted VP with a present-tense antecedent is
generally unproblematic, but present-participial omitted VP with a
present-tense antecedent is on the iffy side; the VPE here calls
attention to itself:
All completely unnecessary, if you
ask
me (though, of course, ...
[ok] nobody did ___).
[?] nobody is ___).
Call the latter pairing the Bakovic Configuration:
Ellipsis: present participle
Antecedent: present tense
We've
commented
on a somewhat similar case on Language Log before, in John
McWhorter's also playful:
[?] One could write a whole paper on it (and, as
it happens, one is ___!).
Call this the McWhorter Configuration:
Ellipsis: present participle
Antecedent: base form
(McWhorter is also playing with two different uses of
one, as I pointed out in that
earlier posting.)
Here's a recent instance of the McWhorter Configuration, from a letter
to
The Advocate (4/20/07, p.
8) from Robert Barzan of Modesto, Calif., about the development of gay
life there:
[?] If this can happen in Modesto, it
can happen anywhere, and it is
___.
This one seems to have been written entirely seriously. It does
have an additional point of interest, the quantificational semantics of
anywhere. Mechanically
filling in the omitted VP gives us:
... it can happen anywhere, and it is
happening anywhere.
This won't fly at all. The problem is that
any-expressions come into (at
least) two flavors, and neither fits in this context. There's a
kind of existential reading for
anywhere
(and other
any-expressions),
but it's limited to "negative polarity" contexts: under negation ("It's
not happening anywhere"), in yes-no questions ("Is it happening
anywhere?"), and in conditionals ("If it's happening anywhere, it's
happening in Modesto"), in particular. Then there's a kind of
universal reading for
anywhere
(and other
any-expressions),
involving "free choice
any"
("It can happen anywhere" 'Pick any place X; it can happen there --
that is, in X'), but it too is limited in its contexts; the facts are
complicated, but for
anywhere
in a VP, the preferred contexts have certain modals, as in "It
can/could/would/might happen anywhere". "It is happening
anywhere" fits neither pattern.
To get something like the intended reading, we need to supply an
explicit universal, something like:
... it can happen anywhere, and it is
happening (almost) everywhere.
How to get this result, and in a general way, is a non-trivial task for
semanticists. Fortunately, I don't pretend to be a real
semanticist, so I can pass on to an even more startling, and
entertaining, piece of data, the title of Stephen Colbert's new book,
which Lee Beck tells me (5/20/07) is, with the relevant parts marked as
before:
I Am
America (And So Can You ___)
This would appear to be just an omitted base-form VP (
be America) with a present-tense
antecedent (
am America), a
configuration that I described above as "generally
unproblematic". But Colbert's title, though (eventually)
interpretable, is massively problematic. To put off some
complexities, I'll shift to a slightly different version, with additive
adverbial
too rather than
so:
I Am
America (And You Can ___ Too)
Compare this tortured ellipsis with the much better:
I Love
America (And You Can ___ Too)
The problem is with omitted base-form VPs with head verb
BE.
And it's general. Colbert's original has
BE + predicative NP, but the same
problem arises with predicative AdjP, predicative PP, present
participle VP in the progressive, and past participle VP in the passive:
AdjP: I Am American
(And You Can ___ Too)
PP: I Am At My Peak (And You
Can ___ Too)
VP in progressive: I Am Wearing a Hat
(And You Can ___ Too)
VP in passive: I Am Being Praised
(And You Can ___ Too)
All of these are much improved if the
be
is preserved, that is, if only the complement of
be is omitted in VPE:
NP: I Am America and You Can Be ___ Too
AjpP: I Am American and You
Can Be ___ Too
etc.
(Remember from earlier discussions that, although the construction is
called "VPE", the omitted material is not necessarily a VP.
Labels are not definitions.)
In any case, there's a constraint on VPE against omitting certain VPs
headed by
BE;
call it the VPE
BE
Constraint. The details aren't crucial to an analysis of
Colbert's title, so I'll pass on to the original, with
so instead of
too.
The thing with additive adverbial
so
is that (a) it has to be initial in its (elliptical) clause (while
too is final) and (b) it requires
the "inverted" auxiliary + subject order (while
too has the default subject +
auxiliary order):
I Can Be
America (And ...
So Can You ___ *Too
Can You ___
*So You Can ___ *Too You Can ___
*You Can ___ So You Can ___
Too )
and, significantly, for many speakers (c) it requires ellipsis of the
complement of the auxiliary (while
too
does not):
I Can Be
America (And ...
So Can You ___
You Can ___ Too)
I Can Be America (And ...
*So Can You Be ___
You Can Be ___ Too)
I Can Be America (And ...
*So Can You Be America You Can Be
America Too)
Call this last condition the
SO Ellipsis Requirement.
Now, when we move away from these fully parallel examples to ones with
a present-tense verb in the antecedent, we're confronted with a
conflict between the two conditions: the VPE
BE Constraint says not to omit, in
this context, the
be of
you can be America, but the
SO
Ellipsis Requirement says you must omit it, in general. Colbert
omitted the
be, violating the
first condition; preserving the
be
(and violating the second condition) gets you:
[??] I Am America (And So Can You Be ___)
I find this marginally more acceptable than Colbert's choice, but less
entertaining (because his presents a little puzzle for you to solve).
On the other hand, maybe Colbert was just treating
BE
as if it were a transitive verb -- "What do you do to America? I
be America!" -- in which case the elliptical clause (
So Can You) is impeccable, but the
preceding main clause (
I Am America)
is peculiar. Colbert being Colbert, maybe we shouldn't try to
decide between these possibilities.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at May 23, 2007 10:02 AM