A Parallel Merge Solution to the Merchant/Johnson Paradox

AbstractThis chapter provides a new argument in favor of a multidominant approach to gapping. The crucial empirical observation it builds on concerns the fact that gapping parallels pseudogapping with respect to the ungrammaticality of voice mismatches. Merchant (2008) derives the ungrammaticality of voice mismatches in pseudogapping from vP (rather than VP) ellipsis, which suggests that gapping should be analyzed as vP ellipsis as well. Such an account of gapping, however, is incompatible with Johnson’s (2000), (2004), (2009) arguments against treating gapping as ellipsis. The chapter shows that the Parallel Merge structures of the kind proposed in Citko (2005) can provide a solution to this paradox as they allow a voice head in a gapping construction to be shared without all the elements above it being shared.