Resumptive pronouns (RP s) in Hebrew are productively used in relative clauses and other Ā-dependencies. In accusative and embedded nominative positions, they alternate with gaps, but in oblique and genitive positions they are obligatory. An influential proposal takes the former type of RP s to be base-generated and the latter type to be a residue of movement (“realizational RP s”); concomitantly, only the latter type is expected to display reconstruction effects. I argue that there are no realizational RP s in Hebrew—all RP s are base-generated alike. Furthermore, all RP s in the language display full reconstruction effects, even inside islands, a pattern observed across a range of Arabic dialects as well. Reconstruction is thus dissociated from movement and is instead explained by NP-ellipsis inside the resumptive DP, now seen as an E-type pronoun. We discuss a range of syntactic and semantic discrepancies between RP s and gaps, which are inexplicable on the realizational view, but receive a natural account on the E-type analysis of RPs.

Bipartite reciprocal phrases are common in Indo-European, Indo-Aryan, and Semitic languages. When occurring with a case particle (K) or a preposition (P), K/P intervenes between the two units of the reciprocal phrase, producing an otherwise exceptional K/P-medial KP/PP. While diachronic descriptions successfully trace the origin of the two units to separate constituents that have gradually become closer, they fall short of explaining the stability of the K/P-medial outcome. Based on a detailed study of the Hebrew reciprocal construction, I argue that its two components are generated as sisters but cannot persist as such because they yield an illicit point of symmetry – an unlabeled phrase. The first member thus raises past K/P, breaking the symmetry, thereby allowing the complement of K/P to be labeled. The analysis is supported by data from intra- and crosslinguistic variation and predicts systematic correlations between the degree of symmetry between the two units of the reciprocal phrase and their separability.

Theories of argument ellipsis (AE) based on PF-deletion or LF-copying do not generate predictions as to possible constraints on the semantic type of the elided argument. Yet such constraints obtain, as documented in Landau 2023 (NLLT): Only <e>-type arguments can be targeted by AE. Focusing on quantificational arguments here, we show that when they yield readings expressible by <e>-type denotations, they may elide, but when they denote genuine generalized quantifiers, they may not. Utilizing the restricted range of interpretations made available by choice function binding and E-type pronouns, the analysis derives a number of peculiar scopal properties of indefinite NPs, quantifiers and exceptive phrases under argument ellipsis.

This chapter presents the major findings and theoretical advances in the area of Control. We describe the different types of control (complement, adjunct, obligatory, nonobligatory) and illustrate their profiles in several languages. It is shown that while certain features of Obligatory Control (OC) are common – nullness of PRO, nonfinite complements – they are not universal, hence should not enter its core definition. Comparing approaches to the choice of controller based on lexical meaning postulates with those based on embedding of speech acts, we conclude that the latter provide deeper insights into the core properties of OC. The fundamental semantic distinction between clauses denoting a property and those denoting a proposition proves to be important: It affects both the possibility of Partial Control in complements and the possibility of Non Obligatory Control in adjuncts. These insights are integrated in the Two-Tiererd Theory of Control, laid out in the final sections.

A series of recent works (Chomsky 2021, Chomsky et al. 2023, Chomsky 2024) offers a novel theory of Obligatory Control (OC), based on the operation Form Copy (FC), which applies in movement chains as well. In this article I offer a critical assessment of the FC theory, focusing on its empirical consequences. I argue that this theory faces significant challenges. First, it offers no satisfactory answer to the fundamental question of what makes control obligatory in many cases. Second, it ignores the mass of evidence that the controllee is a pronoun rather than a lexical NP. Third, it unnecessarily complicates phase theory. Fourth, it overgenerates structures in which the controlled copy is produced by movement (Internal Merge); and fifth, it cannot adequately handle Partial Control. For all these reasons, judgment as to the implications of (or support from) the FC theory of control for the Strong Minimalist Thesis must be suspended.  

Intensive research on Obligatory Control (OC) in the past 2 decades has revealed a rich crosslinguistic terrain of deviations from the classical format. Five types of noncanonical OC are surveyed here: Finite control, controlled overt pronouns, partial control, proxy control and crossed control. Each one is described and illustrated, paying attention to methodological difficulties in establishing its characteristic empirical signature. We then turn to a critical assessment of leading theoretical accounts of these phenomena, pointing to merits and faults, and indicating how they can be integrated with broader concerns of syntactic theory.

Recent studies reveal that the values of finiteness, tense, modality and polarity in a clause elided under sluicing may be distinct from their correlates in the antecedent clause. Focusing on CP ellipsis in Hebrew (an instance of Argument Ellipsis), we first demonstrate that it is distinct from both Null Complement Anaphora and (null) pronominalization, and then show that the values of force (declarative, imperative, interrogative) can be distinct between the antecedent and the missing clause as well. Possible mismatches are bidirectional, ruling out "subset" theories of identity in ellipsis and challenging certain accounts of the semantics of polar questions. Implications for the general theory of ellipsis are discussed and evaluated.

Argument Ellipsis (AE) is a productive process in Hebrew, but some arguments resist ellipsis—precisely those that do not denote individuals. This constraint, a reflection of a general constraint on variables in natural language, is captured if AE sites are descended from a pro element that is derivationally replaced by a constituent recoverable from the antecedent. This must occur after spellout (to escape pronunciation) but prior to LF (to allow overt subextraction). The proposed analysis integrates novel data as well as recent findings from studies of AE in East Asian languages, and offers a new derivational path to ellipsis, which invokes neither PF-deletion nor LF-copying.

Advocating a verb-stranding-VP-ellipsis analysis for object-gap sentences, Andrew Simpson (“In defense of verb-stranding VP ellipsis”) argues that under negation the “adjunct reading” is missing because it depends on focal stress, which cannot be realized on unpronounced material. No such condition holds, I maintain, and the absence of the adjunct reading reflects a syntactic absence: argument-ellipsis sites contain no VP adjuncts. The adjunct reading emerges in some languages when the antecedent sentence is negative too, an inexplicable contingency for the verb-stranding-VP-ellipsis analysis; in fact, these constructions involve polarity ellipsis (of TP), in which VP adjuncts are included. However, this derivation is not available to all languages, explaining some crosslinguistic differences in adjunct readings under negation. Finally, an optional adjunct reading may emerge in affirmative object-gap sentences due to pragmatic enrichment, a process sensitive to context in ways that go beyond the predictions of the syntactic analysis advocated by Simpson.

Sentences like They tricked him into believing them and They charged him with abandoning them raise interesting issues for selection and control. We show that these two sentences exemplify two distinct classes, subsuming P-gerund constructions that are formed with seven distinct prepositions: implicative vs. nonimplicative constructions. The first class displays a cluster of restrictions, both syntactic and semantic, which are absent from the second class: It resists partial control or embedded lexical subjects, and it bans object drop and movement of the P-gerund phrase. The existence of these two classes, as well as their empirical profiles, follow from Landau’s (2015) theory of control and challenge alternative approaches.