Indonesian sluicing and verb phrase ellipsis: Description and explanation in a minimalist framework

This dissertation investigates two elliptical phenomena, sluicing and verb phrase ellipsis (VPE), in Indonesian. This dissertation is equally concerned with description and formal analysis, and provides the first in-depth description and generative analysis of both Indonesian sluicing and VPE.; First, I show that Indonesian displays auxiliary-stranding VPE, similar to English. I demonstrate that this ellipsis (i) targets the vP and (ii) is distinct from other elliptical phenomena including null complement anaphora, stripping, comparatives, and individual null constituents.; Second, I show Indonesian sluicing to be typologically unusual, failing to obey Merchant's (2001) Preposition Stranding Generalization. This generalization, which posits a correlation between preposition stranding in wh-questions and preposition omission in sluicing, has been argued to support the PF-Deletion approach (e.g. Ross 1969), under which sluices are formed with wh -movement identically to non-elliptical wh-questions. I show that, under PF-Deletion, Indonesian sluices involve wh-movement, arguing (i) the sluices are not elliptical wh-clefts, but are elliptical wh-questions and (ii) Indonesian wh-questions involve wh-movement. Indonesian sluicing thus presents a challenge to PF-Deletion.; Thirdly, sluiced wh-phrases crosslinguistically are known to not be subject to island constraints. Under PF-Deletion, islands are realized as properties of PF representations, and violations are repaired through deletion of the island from the representation. I argue this view of islands is untenable within Minimalism, showing it is impossible to formulate Subjacency as a constraint on representations. Consequently, the lack of island effects under sluicing cannot be handled by PF-Deletion. I contend a theory of ellipsis must be compatible with the alternative view of islands: the Minimal Link Condition, as part of the definition of Move (Chomsky 2004), prevents all Subjacency-violating movements.; Finally, I propose a Minimalist 'LF-Copying' analysis, compatible with Subjacency as an inviolable constraint, to account for Indonesian sluicing. The wh-phrase is generated in [Spec, CP] and later associated with a TP-internal variable, following 'sidewards' movement of the antecedent TP into the sluiced clause. In Chung, Ladusaw, and McCloskey's original (1995) proposal, this association obtains via a semantic coindexing operation, Merger. I propose Merger be reformulated as long-distance Agree (Chomsky 2004) between C0/wh-phrase and its correlate in the antecedent TP.