On the sluicing-COMP Generalisation in Mabia and Kwa

0205202837| 0242980545 | |
soacheampong@uew.edu.gh | |
Download CV |
On the sluicing-COMP Generalisation in Mabia and Kwa
According to Merchant鈥檚 (2001:62) Sluice-COMP Generalization (henceforth SCG), "in聽sluicing, no non-operator material may appear in COMP." In other words, the remnant, usually located聽in the CP periphery, cannot consist of non-operators (cf. Lobeck 1995). Therefore, the SCG predicts聽that only the wh-operator in (1), for example, is allowed to remain after the TP/FinP of the interrogative聽sentence is elided. However, Baltin (2010), using Gungbe as a case study, argues that in morphological聽focus marking languages, the focus marker, which is a non-operator, survives ellipsis, thus violating the聽SCG. We will call this the "Baltin鈥檚 Generalization" (henceforth BG) (see also Mendes & Kandybowicz聽 2023; Lipt谩k & Aboh 2021; Aboh 2004). In this study, drawing on data from two morphological focus聽marking languages, Likpakpaanl (Mabia, SVO) and Yoruba (Kwa, SVO), we argue that both languages聽behave differently to SCG and BG.