Masaya Yoshida (ICREA/UAB) & Javier Fernández Sánchez (UAB): ‘If you front, you may strip; if you strip, you must front’

Seminari del CLT

Divendres, 17 d’abril de 2026
Hora 15:30
Aula 202, Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres

Abstract:
In this talk, we discuss stripping – an ellipsis process which reduces a clause to a single constituent (Hankamer and Sag 1976, Depiante 2000) – within two types of if-clauses in English and Spanish, namely if-pol(ar) and if-cond(itional). Both English and Spanish allow stripping within if-pol, which constitutes evidence against those who claim that stripping is disallowed in embedded contexts (Merchant 2003, Wurmbrand 2017, Johnson 2018). However, Spanish (unlike English) rejects stripping within if-cond. We will argue that (i) the ellipsis site in if-stripping (across if-types) is associated with full-fledged clausal structure (cf. Park and Kim 2022) and that (ii) the asymmetric behavior between Spanish and English regarding if-cond results from differences in how focus fronting and clausal ellipsis interact in both languages.