We discuss cases of salvation and non-salvation by deletion in the domain of lexical gaps, and distinguish two types of defectiveness: (a) defectiveness that can be saved by PF deletion, which we take to signal the lack of an eligible allomorph for certain environments within a language, and (b) defectiveness that cannot be saved by PF deletion, which we take to signal the lack of a proper alloseme for a given environment. With ellipsis modeled as an instruction for nonpronunciation on the PF branch of the grammar, only gaps on the Exponent List can be saved by it.
© 2021 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2021
MIT Press
You do not currently have access to this content.