The Preposition Stranding Generalization and Conditions on Sluicing: Evidence from Emirati Arabic

1 Introduction

Merchant (2001) argues that sluicing is derived by IP-deletion from an underlying wh-construction at the level of PF (following Ross 1969), as shown in (1).

1. (1).

   1. a. Jack bought something, but I don’t know [_CP what_i [_IP Jack bought t_i]].

   2. b. Jack talked to someone, but I don’t know [_CP who_i [_IP Jack talked to t_i]].

Merchant (2001:92) proposes (2) to capture the parallelism between sluicing and wh-questions.

1. (2).

   Preposition Stranding Generalization (PSG)

   A language L will allow preposition stranding under sluicing iff L allows preposition stranding under regular wh-movement.

The PSG is demonstrated in (1b), where the wh-sluice ‘who’ leaves a stranded preposition under sluicing, which corresponds to the fact that English is a P-stranding language. Merchant further demonstrates the descriptive power of the PSG by verifying its applicability to more than twenty languages. Examples drawn from other languages continue to confirm its validity (e.g., Almeida and Yoshida 2007, Stjepanović 2008, Rodrigues, Nevins, and Vicente 2009, Van Craenenbroeck 2010).

In this squib, I investigate Emirati Arabic (EA) in detail and argue that it provides cases in which the PSG can be falsified. In EA, while P-stranding is banned in wh-questions, sluicing is possible even when the underlying structure would contain a stranded preposition. For example:

1. (3). John ʃǝrab gahwa [wijja ħǝd],      bǝs maa ʕǝrf

   John drank coffee with someone but not 1.know

   [mǝnu John ʃǝrab gahwa [_PP wijja t_i]].

   who John drank coffee      with

   ‘John drank coffee with someone, but I don’t know who.’

Potential counterexamples to the PSG have been adduced from other languages, yet further analyses reveal that they do not involve P-stranding by wh-movement (e.g., Brazilian Portuguese, French (Rodrigues, Nevins, and Vicente 2009), Serbo-Croatian (Stjepanović

Earlier versions of this squib were presented at the 46th and 47th annual meetings of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 46, 47) and the Twenty-fifth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics (ALS-25). I would like to thank Fatima Al Eisaei, Mariam Kaabi, and Aamna Shemeili for the discussion of Emirati Arabic data, and Stephen Matthews, Roumyana Pancheva, and the two LI reviewers for their comments.

This squib is dedicated to the memory of my academic and life mentor, Jean-Roger Vergnaud. 2008)). At first glance, EA might seem to be one such case since it possesses two types of wh-constructions: wh-fronting (a movement construction) and wh-clefts (a nonmovement construction). For the sake of uniformity, I call the elliptical wh-construction formed by wh-fronting sluicing and the one formed by wh-clefts pseudosluicing (Merchant 2001).

In this squib, I defend four claims. First, EA allows both sluicing and pseudosluicing. Second, sluicing and pseudosluicing are distinguished by individual lexical and morphosyntactic properties, on the one hand, and the syntactic projection of the antecedent clause, on the other hand. Third, the PSG is falsified even though both sluicing and pseudosluicing are at work. Fourth, in order to preserve the original insight of the PSG, its statement should be modified so that for languages in which the P-stranding constraint is defined at the level of PF, violations can be rescued by sluicing as a result of PF deletion. That is to say, any language that parameterizes the P-stranding constraint under wh-movement as a PF condition can salvage P-stranding violations via sluicing as PF deletion.

2 Two Types of Wh-Constructions in Emirati Arabic

EA possesses two types of wh-questions: wh-fronting (4a) and wh-clefts (4b).¹ (sm = singular masculine)

1. (4).

   1. a. ʃuu_i ʃtǝr-eet       t_i ʔms?

      what bought-2sm yesterday

      ‘What did you buy yesterday?’

   2. b. ʃuu_i (hu) ɛlli ʃtǝr-eet-ahi      ʔms?

      what 3sm that bought-2sm -3sm yesterday

      ‘What was it that you bought (it) yesterday?’

The two wh-constructions have been documented in various Arabic dialects (e.g., Wahba 1984, Shlonsky 1997, 2002, Aoun, Benmamoun, and Choueiri 2010). Wh-fronting leaves a movement gap (i.e...