Q-DELETION
(Syntax) Ellipsis is a grammatical operation that deletes the instructions for vocabulary insertion at PF. In principle, any object built up in the syntax can be subject to ellipsis in this sense, and as we will see, many syntactic objects meet the conditions for ellipsis at different stages of a given derivation. I furthermore propose that there is a distinction between phrases and heads: whereas phrases are elided in narrow syntax, heads are elided at PF. The two types are elided under different locality conditions as well.
 Phrasal ellipsis applies entirely in the syntax. Any syntactic object that is marked as elliptical in the syntax is excluded from undergoing vocabulary insertion. There are at least two views on vocabulary insertion: on the additive approach, phonological information is added to abstract morphemes following the principles that govern insertion (such as the Subset Principle), on the replacive view, vocabulary insertion consists of substitution of the free variable Q.
 I propose that we adopt the replacive view on VI. On this conception, ellipsis can then be seen as Q-deletion in the syntax triggered by the mere presence of an [E]-feature in the relevant domain. Deleting a Q-feature automatically blocks the substitution operation that is at the core of the replacive approach to vocabulary insertion. The result of Q-deletion for the complement of a given [E]-feature-bearing head is illustrated in (1), for the VP ellipsis example Laura likes ellipsis and Jason does, too. Angled brackets indicate successful applications of Q-deletion.

1. 
         VoiceP
         ╱╲
        ╱   ╲
     [Voice, E]    VP
               ╱╲
             ╱   ╲
         [V, like, <Q>]   DP
               ╱╲
              ╱______╲
             [D, ellipsis, <Q>]

Q-FEATURE
(Syntax) A feature that has its origin in the (Split) Degree Hypothesis (Bresnan 1973, Corver 1997). Corver introduced Q as part of the extended functional projection of adjectives, where it served as the host for such adjectival modifiers as much, more, less, enough. Unlike Corver, I argue that the elements which he argues are merged in Q consist of a "Q-feature", i.e. Q is part of their internal structure.
 Q is a necessary feature to express scalar quantity. | Karen De Clercq, 2017

QUANTIFICATION
(Logic) According to Wise (2004), quantification is a limitation imposed on the variables of a proposition by the quantifiers some, all, or no. It refers to an operator that binds a variable ranging over a domain of discourse. The following example from Arabic illustrates this:

1. Kul
   Every

   bint
   girl

   karim
   Karim

   gal
   said.3SM

   ?in-ha/-ha
   that-Cl/-Cl

   hi
   she

   raH
   will

   tinJaH
   success.3SF

   'Every girl, Karim said that she will pass' (Aoun et al., 2001)

QUANTIFICATIONAL NULL ARGUMENT
(Semantics) As originally observed by Shinohara (2004) and developed later by Takahashi (2008), null arguments in Japanese allow a wider range of interpretations than indefinite pronouns. Consider the examples in (1) below:

1. Japanese
   1. Masa-wa
      Masa-TOP

      [san-ko-no
      3-CL-GEN

      booru]-o
      ball-ACC

      ket-ta.
      kick-PAST

      'Masa kicked three balls.'
   2. Ken-mo
      Ken-also

      [e]
       

      ket-ta.
      kick-PAST

      Lit. 'Ken also kicked [e].'

2. It can mean that Ken also kicked all three balls that Masa kicked. Following Takahashi (2008), I call this an E-type reading, because the null object under this interpretation functions just like what is called an E-type pronoun in the literature (cf. Evans 1980).
3. An indefinite reading, in which Ken also kicked balls (irrespective of the number of the balls that he kicked) (cf. Hoji 1998).
4. The quantificational reading, where Ken also kicked three balls (and the set of the balls that Ken kicked is different from the set of balls that Masa kicked).

5. Japanese
   1. Masa-wa
      Masa-TOP

      [san-ko-no
      3-CL-GEN

      booru]-o
      ball-ACC

      ket-ta.
      kick-PAST

      'Masa kicked three balls.'
   2. Demo,
      but

      Ken-wa
      Ken-also

      [e]
       

      kera-na-katta.
      kick-NEG-PAST

      Lit. 'But, Ken did not kick [e].

QUANTIFIER

1. (Grammar; Logic) A type of determiner, such as all, some, many, few, a lot, and no, (but not numerals) that indicates quantity.
    Quantification is also used in logic, where it is a formula constructor that produces new formulas from old ones. Natural languages' determiners have been argued to correspond to logical quantifiers at the semantic level.
    The study of quantification in natural languages is much more difficult than the corresponding problem for formal languages. This comes in part from the fact that the grammatical structure of natural language sentences may conceal the logical structure. | Wikipedia, 2016
2. (Logic) An operation that tells us which elements in the universe are being applied to the open sentence in question. There are two main quantifiers. The universal quantifier uses the symbol ∀ and is translated as 'for all'. If our universe of discourse is all natural numbers,

   (∀x) (2x is even)

   which translates to 'for all natural numbers x, 2x is even.'
    The existential quantifier is represented by the symbol ∃, which is translated as 'there exists.' An example would be

   (∃x)(2x is 10)

   which translates to 'there exists a natural number x such that 2x = 10.' | Anita Dunn, 2022
3. (Grammar) Quantifier expressions are marks of generality. They come in many syntactic categories in English, but determiners like all, each, some, many, most, and few provide some of the most common examples of quantification. In English, they combine with singular or plural nouns, sometimes qualified by adjectives or relative clauses, to form explicitly restricted quantifier phrases such as some apples, every material object, or most planets. These quantifier phrases may in turn combine with predicates in order to form sentences such as some apples are delicious, every material object is extended, or most planets are visible to the naked eye. We may conceive of determiners like every and some as binary quantifiers of the form Q (A, B), which may operate on two predicates, A and B, in order to form a sentence. | Gabriel Uzquiano, 2022

QUANTIFIER DOMAIN
(Logic) Elements that a quantifier quantifies over. | Ke at al, 2016

QUANTIFIER FLOAT

1. (Syntax) Or, Q-float. A phenomenon in which a quantifier is separated from the nominal it associates with (The cookies will all have been eaten up by then!). The phenomenon has received two major analyses:
   • Stranding: The associate moves leftward out of a complex constituent that contains both it and the floating quantifier.
   • Adjunction: This analysis considers floating quantifiers to be adverbial adjuncts.
    | Eman Al Khalaf, 2016
2. (Syntax) Examples:
   1. 1. The carpets have been cleaned.
      2. The carpets have been all cleaned.
      3. The carpets have all been cleaned.
      4. The carpets all have been cleaned.
   2. 1. All the children might have seen the movie.
      2. The children might have all seen the movie.
      3. The children might all have seen the movie.
      4. The children all might have seen the movie.
    (Rochman 2005) | Tomohiro Yanagi, 2023

QUASIMODAL
(Grammar) A word or phrase, such as better, need to, able to, or supposed to, that has features similar to those of modals but is not a true modal. Quasimodals express possibility, necessity or ability, like modals. However, they cannot take contracted negation (n't) or undergo subject-auxiliary inversion. | Yale Grammatical Diversity Project

QUESTION UNDER DISCUSSION (QUD)

1. (Pragmatics) The (often implicit) question that participants in the discourse are trying to answer. For example, the QUD can be what you did over the weekend, answering by We went for a walk, which can be followed by and then had a nice cup of tea, which can be seen as answering an implicit QUD 'and what happened then?'. "QUD" can be seen as a framework to understand how sentences in a discourse relate to each other. | Jenneke van der Wal and Stavros Skopeteas, 2019
2. (Pragmatics; Information Structure) An analytic tool for characterizing how a sentence fits in its context. The idea is that each sentence in discourse addresses a (often implicit) QUD either by answering it, or by bringing up another question that can help answer that QUD. The linguistic form and the interpretation of a sentence, in turn, may depend on the QUD it addresses.
    The first proponents of the QUD approach (von Stutterheim and Klein 1989, van Kuppevelt 1995) thought of it as a general approach to the analysis of discourse structure where structural relations between sentences in a coherent discourse are understood in terms of relations between questions they address. For instance, according to von Stutterheim and Klein (1989) a typical structure of a narrative is given by a sequence of questions What happened at t₁?, What happened at t₂?, What happened at t₃?, etc., where t₁ precedes t₂, and t₂ precedes t₃. The sequence is subordinated to the overarching quaestio of the whole text What happened at t_i?.
    The concept of QUD proved useful in the analysis of a wide range of linguistic phenomena that in the general spirit of von Stutterheim and Klein and van Kuppevelt fall under the notion of local, i.e. sentence-level effects of the QUD. This includes first and foremost the information structure of the sentence, the accentuation pattern induced by the partition of the sentence into focus and background and the interpretation of focus-sensitive operators. The influential proposal of Roberts (1996), which provided both a general QUD-based approach to pragmatics and an account of focus, inspired much further theoretical work on information structure including Büring (2003) on contrastive topics and Beaver and Clark (2008) on focus particles. The intuition behind it is the same as that behind the well-known question-answer test used to detect the focus structure of a sentence. | Anton Benz and Katja Jasinskaja, 2017

QUOTATIVE EVIDENTIAL

1. (Grammar) An evidential that signals that someone else is the source of the statement made.
   1. Shipibo:
      
      cai-ronqui
      going-QUOTATIVE

      reocoocainyantanque
      he.turned.over

      'Reportedly, while he was going (in his boat), he turned over.'
    (Chung and Timberlake 1985, Nida 1949, Palmer 1986, Dahl 1985) | SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, 2003
2. (Grammar) Abbreviated QEV. In Laal (isolate, Chad), mí is a specialized "quotative evidential", not just an indirect-reported-speech embedded clause marker and not just a reported evidential (hearsay). From Aikhenvald 2004:
   • Reported: "stating what someone else has said without specifying the exact authorship".
   • Quotative: "introducing the exact author of the quoted report".
    In Laal, the author is always known (even when not explicitly mentioned) → quotative. | Florian Lionnet, 2015

R-EXPRESSION

1. (Binding Theory) Full NPs, e.g., the actress, that are typically referentially independent, and descriptively richer than reflexives, reciprocals, or pronouns. (Chomsky 1981) | Routledge Handbook of Syntax, 2014
2. (Syntax) If the head of a phrase has lexical features (or certain grammatical features, such as wh) this phrase is an R-expression. Thus the merry linguist, the idiot, everyone, which man, etc., are all R-expressions. R-expressions cannot be bound. | Blackwell Companion to Syntax, 2006
3. (Grammar) A referential expression, such as John or the dog: one that, unlike pronouns and anaphora, independently refers to, i.e., picks out, an entity in the world. | Wiktionary, 2016

RADICAL ARGUMENT ELLIPSIS
(Syntax) Often leaves verbs the only element in an utterance. | Penny Brown, 1998

RADICALLY TRUNCATED CLAUSE
(Syntax) A minimal VP that lacks vP and all the higher projections in:

• the inflectional domain (subject and object agreement, tense, aspect, modality)
• and the higher left periphery of the clause (focusing and negation):

1. Hungarian
    
   [_VP
    

   sör
   internal arg. [_V'
   beer

   meg
   PRT
   PRT

   isz
   V ] ]
   drink

   'I/you/etc. drink/drank the beer.'

2. Hungarian
   [Namármost
   well

   amikor
   when

   én
   I

   alud-t-am
   slept-PST-1SG

   ott,
   there

   úgy
   so

   kezd-t-em,
   start-PST-1SG

   hogy]
   that

   szemét
   rubbish

   le-visz,
   PRT-carry

   szoba
   room

   rendbe-rak,
   PRT-put

   fürdőszoba
   bathroom

   el-pakol ...
   PRT-pack

   'So when I was sleeping there, the way I started was I took out the rubbish, I cleared the room, I cleared the bathroom.'

RAGGED MIDDLE
(Syntax) For Halliday (1961), "[t]he middle ranks of the grammar are often the most complex, presumably since they face both ways; so that a grammar which starts unidirectionally from the two ends will find it difficult to avoid leaving the middle ragged". | Lise Fontaine, 2023

RAISING

1. (Syntax) A process by which a NP or other element is moved from a subordinate clause into the structure of the larger clause that includes it. | Guy Deutscher, 2000
2. (Syntax) Raising constructions involve the movement of an argument from an embedded or subordinate clause to a matrix or main clause; in other words, a raising predicate/verb appears with a syntactic argument that is not its semantic argument, but is rather the semantic argument of an embedded predicate. For example, in they seem to be trying, the predicand of trying is the subject of seem. Although English has raising constructions, not all languages do.
    The term "raising" has its origins in the transformational analysis of such constructions; the constituent in question is seen as being raised from its initial deep structure position, as the subject of the embedded predicate, to its surface structure position in the matrix predicate/verb. Raising predicates/verbs are related to control predicates, although there are important differences between the two predicate/verb types. | Wikipedia, 2021
3. (Phonetics/Phonology) A sound change in which a vowel or consonant becomes higher or raised, meaning that the tongue becomes more elevated or positioned closer to the roof of the mouth than before. The opposite effect is known as lowering. Raising or lowering may be triggered by a nearby sound, when it is a form of assimilation, or it may occur on its own. | Wikipedia, 2021

RAISING TO OBJECT EMBEDDED PASSIVE
(Syntax) E.g., Suki wanted him to be kissed by Louise [where him is considered to be the subject of the embedded passive clause, after which him is raised to a object position in the matrix clause.] | ?

RATIONALE CLAUSE

1. (Grammar) Abbreviated RatC. Used to express someone's rationale or the intention with which an event was brought about. In German, they are expressed in either finite (introduced by damit) or non-finite form (introduced by um). If the matrix clause describes an event that cannot be brought about by intentional action (or by natural design), the Rationale Clause is heavily degraded. A felicitous interpretation of (2) would require Susi to have rigged the lottery in her favor. On the basis of facts like these, Rationale Clauses are often mentioned as tracking the RESP(onsibility)-relation in the sense of Farkas (1988).
   1. Susi
      Susi

      hat
      has

      sich
      herself

      einen
      a

      Glücksbringer
      luck.bringer

      gekauft,
      bought

      um
      UM

      in
      in.the

      Lotto
      lottery

      zu
      to

      gewinnen.
      win.

      'Susi bought herself a talisman in order to win the lottery.'
   2. # Susi
      Susi

      hat
      has

      im
      in.the

      Lotto
      lottery

      gewonnen,
      won

      um
      UM

      ihre
      her

      Schulden
      debt

      zurückzahlen
      pay.back

      zu
      to

      können.
      be.able

      'Susi won the lottery to be able to pay back her debt.'
    | Felix Frühauf, 2023
2. (Grammar) Or, "in order to" clause, or, result clause. Easily confused with the purpose clause (PC) is the "rationale clause" (RatC). RatC can be distinguished from PC by the fact that RatC permit only subject gaps, whose antecedent is (usually) the matrix subject, rather than its object. Note the ambiguity of the following:
   1. Amy Lou_i took Mildred_j to the zoo e_i/j to feed the lions.
   On the PC reading, Mildred is feeding the lions; on the RatC reading Amy Lou is feeding the lions (possibly using Mildred as lion food). A RatC reading may always be paraphrased with in order, as in (2), to rule out the PC reading:
   2. Amy Lou_i took Mildred_j to the zoo in order e_i/*j to feed the lions.
    In contrast with PC, the controller of a RatC gap need not be any argument of the main verb, but can be the matrix predicate as a whole:
   3. Mildred was thrown in the lion cage to keep her from tallking.
    Further, the RatC subject gap is optional:
   4. Elroy killed Oscar in order for Sylvia to escape.
    Finally, RatC are daughters of S, and not VP, and may therefore be preposed alone (6) or otherwise isolated from the VP (7):
   5. Helga carries a hat pin to protect herself.
   6. To protect herself, Helga carries a hat pin.
   7. What Helga does to protect herself is carry a hat pin.
    | Alison K. Huettner, Marie M. Vaughan, and David D. McDonald, 1987

RECENCY ILLUSION
The belief that things you have noticed only recently are in fact recent. This is a selective attention effect. Your impressions are simply not to be trusted; you have to check the facts. Again and again—retro not, double is, speaker-oriented hopefully, split infinitives, etc.—the phenomena turn out to have been around, with some frequency, for very much longer than you think. It's not just Kids These Days.
 Professional linguists can be as subject to the Recency Illusion as anyone else. Charles Hockett wrote in 1958 (A Course in Modern Linguistics) about "the recent colloquial pattern I'm going home and eat", what Laura Staum has been investigating under the name (due to me) the GoToGo construction. Here's an example I overheard in a Palo Alto restaurant on 8/6/05:

1. I'm goin' out there and sleep in the tent.

RECONSTRUCTION
(Generative Syntax) An operation proposed in Chomsky (1977) in the derivation of LF from S-structure, which returns material pied-piped by wh-movement to the extraction site so as to derive an operator-variable chain headed by the wh-operator itself.
 By reconstruction, the LF (2) is derived from the SS (1):

1. which book about Mary does he like t
2. which x, does he like [ x book about Mary ]

3. which book about himself does John like t

RECOVERABILITY
(Semantics)

1. John ate Ø_object
   recoverable object: belongs to the category of Edibles (grammatical sentence)
2. *John made Ø_object
   non-recoverable object: basically anything can be made! (ungrammatical sentence).
3. John beheaded the prisoner Ø_Instrument
   recoverable Instrument: a heavy-bladed tool, possibly a sword (Require-Instrument verb)
4. John killed the prisoner Ø_Instrument
   non-recoverable Instrument: a weapon? poison? bare hands? (Allow-Instrument verb)

Page Last Modified January 3, 2024

 

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