Topic-Comment Structure, Focus Movement, and Gapping Formation

While canonical gapping in English can be analyzed as either VPellipsis (e.g., Sag 1976, Pesetsky 1982, Jayaseelan 1990, Lasnik 1999a, Johnson 2000, Coppock 2001, Lin 2002, Baltin 2003, Takahashi 2004) or across-the-board V/VP-movement (Johnson 1994, 2004, 2006, 2009), certain English-like gapping constructions in Modern Mandarin are argued to be multiple sentence fragments, formed by a series of syntactic operations that involve topicalization, focus movement, and IP-deletion.