Günther Christine. The Elliptical Noun Phrase in English: Structure and Use

Routledge, 2013. — 165 p. — (Routledge Studies in Germanic Linguistics). — ISBN 0415658268, 9780415658263.This book presents a detailed analysis of structural as well as pragmatic aspects underlying the phenomenon of noun ellipsis in English. Here Günther examines the structure of elliptical noun phrases to account for the conditions on noun ellipsis and those on one-insertion, with special emphasis on the (oft-neglected) parallels between the two. She also examines the use of noun ellipsis with adjectives in order to shed light on this under-researched phenomenon, drawing on data from the British National Corpus.Nounless Noun Phrases
Aims and Scope
Theoretical Background and Terminology
Licensors of Empty Nouns in English—Setting the Scene
Licensors of Noun Ellipsis in English
Overview of Prenominal Items and the Heads They Take
Determiners
Adjectives
Noun Ellipsis in German
Questions to Be Addressed
Inflection, Focus, and Partitivity—Previous Accounts of Noun Ellipsis
Two Empty Nouns and Their Properties
Inflection and Agreement
Lobeck’s Analysis
Kester’s Analysis
Against Formal Licensing and Identification
Semantic Features—Partitivity
Sleeman’s (1995) Account for Noun Ellipsis
The Notion of Partitivity
The Syntactic Definition of Partitivity
Partitivity as a Semantic Feature viii Contents
Information Structure
Focus Projections
Semantic Effects of Focus
One as a ClassifierConditions on Noun Ellipsis in English
Empty Nouns and Contrast
Noun Ellipsis versus One-Insertion
Mass-Count Properties of the Licensors
The Nature of Every One
Some Remarks on the Definite Article
The Structure of the Elliptical Noun Phrase
Deletion Under Adjacency
Nominal Classification and Ellipsis
Different Nominal Classification Systems
Noun Ellipsis and the Mass-Count Distinction in English
Non–Antecedent-Based Uses of Empty Nouns
Noun Ellipsis in GermanAdjectival Modifiers in Elliptical Noun Phrases
Conducting a Corpus Study on Noun Ellipsis
Adjectives Used in Elliptical Noun Phrases
Contextual Limitations of Sets: Taxonomies and
Lexical Relations
Different Uses of Elliptical Noun Phrases
Taxonomizing Contexts
Lexical Relations
Further Means to Express Contrast
Contextual Limitations of Reference Sets
The Notion of Classifying Adjectives
Closed Sets of Referents
Preference for Elliptical Noun Phrases in Taxonomies
Realizations of the Head Noun: Lexical, Silent, and One
Distance between Anaphor and Antecedent Contents ix
Text Types
Antecedents of the Silent Noun and One
Generic Reference
Accessibility
Anaphoric Head Noun Realizations with Old and New
Factors Determining Accessibility
Summary and ConclusionNotesIndex Acknowledgments