Ellipsis as a Diagnostic Tool of Feature Strength and the Syntactic Structure of Ilocano

Abstract

This dissertation examines Ilocano, an Austronesian Filipino language, within the Minimalist Framework, in an effort to tease apart the general syntactic properties of the language. I show that Ilocano underlying structure can easily be captured within the standard syntactic structures proposed for languages generally (Universal Grammar). In my examination of ellipsis in Ilocano, I concern myself strictly with syntactic and not semantic properties. I show that syntactic feature distribution (e.g. [+FOC], [+NEG], [+DET]) in combination with the two basic operations of the Minimalist Program: FEATURE-CHECKING and MERGE can account for both the underlying structure of Ilocano utterances as well as the word-order at Spell-Out, without making any stipulations not found in languages generally.My research also reveals new insights and corrects existing assumptions about certain previously undiscovered underlying structural properties of Ilocano. I account for the restrictive word ordering and structure found in Ilocano by assigning a universally applicable, non-controversial set of functional and lexical features to morphemes. These features satisfy, individually or collectively, feature-checking requirements in the language, resulting in the attested output of Ilocano. The types of ellipsis considered as a diagnostic toward that end are: NP-ellipsis, Bare Argument Ellipsis/Stripping, Gapping, Sluicing and Psuedogapping. I argue that the primary mechanism which licenses ellipsis in Ilocano is FOCUS-RAISING which allows extraction of remnant material prior to ellipsis of the TP in the case of all verbal-type ellipsis in Ilocano; or the DP in terms of Ilocano NP-ellipsis.