Kalin and Weisser (2019) observe that Spanish, among other differential-object-marking (DOM) languages, allows for what they call asymmetric DOM in coordination , that is, a DP coordinate structure in which an unmarked DP and a marked DP are conjoined. Given that coordinate structures are islands, asymmetric DOM challenges movement analyses for DOM. Yet we show that alleged cases of asymmetric DOM in Spanish do not involve DP-coordination; rather, they involve coordination of a larger structure plus TP-ellipsis. Evidence involves binding, extraction, fragment answers, and association with focus. We conclude that asymmetric DOM does not exist in Spanish, a fact consonant with movement analyses.

On the basis of certain semantic intuitions, Barros (2012) argues that ellipsis does not require structural isomorphism between elided structure and its antecedent. We tackle this claim. Semantic intuitions cannot be a pointer to the analysis of silent structure. We provide empirical evidence that raises the question of to what extent semantic intuitions about plausible articulable syntax must inform one’s analysis of silent structure. We conclude that the answer to this question must be crosslinguistically informed. We conjecture that ellipsis introduces ellipsis-specific interpretive mechanisms, so that intuitions about “how the unelided structure would be interpreted” are not empirically relevant.