Sluicing in Dravidian: Tracing the source
Rahul Balusu
June 2015
 

Conventionally, Dravidian languages are described as being wh-in-situ (Subba Rao 2012). Jayaseelan (2001 et seq.) proposes that there is (partial) wh-movement to IP internal Focus positions, taking the fact that the wh-subject surfaces not clause-initially but between the objects and the final verb, as the primary evidence, among other diagnostics. In a revival of the wh-in-situ idea, Mathew (2014) argues that the finite verb in Dravidian is in C, with the wh-material in-situ, while the other arguments move to Topic positions, creating the illusion of wh-movement to a preverbal position. This paper seeks to establish which of these proposals is on the right track for Dravidian, using as the divining rod, characteristics of sluicing, a phenomenon that has not been discussed in any of the previous literature on Dravidian.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003944
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Proceedings of FASAL 5
keywords: sluicing clefts, semantics, syntax
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