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This article addresses the longstanding debate on the unification of parasitic gaps (PGs) and across-the-board (ATB) constructions, discussing novel data from Italian. We show that PP PGs are indeed possible in the language (contra Cinque 1990), which undermines a previous argument against unification. We further show that apparent mismatches in the prepositional content of the main clause extractee and the “parasitic” extractee are allowed with certain reciprocal verbs like litigare ‘argue’, which feature an underlying unaccusative structure (van Craenenbroeck & Johnson 2023b) and prepositions that can “disappear” in specific alternations. We argue that PG constructions are derived through smuggling (Hicks 2009) of the parasitic extractee, which is underspecified for case, to the edge of the adjunct clause, from where it can then undergo ATB movement under identity with the main clause extractee. In using this analysis to explain the range of possible mismatches between PGs and their antecedents, we further strengthen the case for reducing PGs to ATB.

In this paper I propose that ellipsis is licensed by overt movement. Examining variation in VP-ellipsis across English dialects, I show that movement is crucially implicated in whether or not a given element can license ellipsis. I discuss well-known restrictions on VP-ellipsis and present new data that shows that a movement-based account of these restrictions is superior to previous ones. I show that the proposed account can be extended to other cases involving A′ movement with empirical benefits, and I conclude by sketching the technical implementation of the theory, arguing that ellipsis is a ‘repair’ operation that prevents a linearization failure following non-deletion of a lower copy. I suggest that types of movement that are unable to spell out lower copies (i.e. A-movement) do not license ellipsis, thus explaining ellipsis licensing in terms of general conditions on copy deletion

This dissertation uses the methods of literary linguistics to investigate experimental uses of literary language. I consider what kinds of formal experimentation are possible with natural language, examine how the unusual forms of experimental literature are interpreted, and ask what these kinds of experimentation show us about the nature of language. To begin with, I will discuss the goals of this study in detail, outlining the theoretical basis for a linguistic study of experimental literature and what may be learned from such a study. Literary linguistics is concerned with understanding how literary texts use language, focusing on formal aspects of literary texts and how they are related to the formal features of language. Language is the medium of literary texts, and the formal aspects of these texts - such as metre or genre - are in part enabled by using this medium. To understand regularities in the formal aspects of literary texts, literary linguistics research explores regularities in linguistic form and the ways in which the literary form exploits linguistic form.