In syntax, sluicing is a type of ellipsis that occurs in both direct and indirect interrogative clauses. The ellipsis is introduced by a wh-expression, whereby in most cases, everything except the wh-expression is elided from the clause. Sluicing has been studied in detail in the early 21st century and it is therefore a relatively well-understood type of ellipsis. Sluicing occurs in many languages.
Basic examples Sluicing is illustrated with the following examples. In each case, an embedded question is understood though only a question word or phrase is pronounced. (The intended interpretations of the question-denoting elliptical clause are given in parentheses; parts of these are anaphoric to the boldface material in the antecedent.)
Phoebe ate something, but she doesn't know what. (=what she ate) Jon doesn't like the lentils, but he doesn't know why. (=why he doesn't like the lentils) Someone has eaten the soup. Unfortunately, I don't know who. (=who has eaten the soup) Sluicing in these examples occurs in indirect questions. It is also frequent in direct questions across speakers, e.g.
Somebody is coming for dinner tonight. - Who? (=Who is coming for dinner tonight)? They put something in the mailbox. - What? (=What did they put in the mailbox)? The examples of sluicing above have the sluiced material following its antecedent. This material can also precede its antecedent, e.g.
I don't know why, but the pictures have been moved. (=why the pictures have been moved) When and how is unclear, but somebody should say something. (=when and how somebody should say something) Merchant states that these and other examples of sluicing can be organized into four categories of sluicing constructions. These types include sluices with adjunct wh-phrases, sluices with overt correlates, sluices with implicit arguments and contrast sluices. The first type refers to when the wh-phrase does not have an elided copy of the antecedent but is an adjunct.
The second type refers to a correlate in the antecedent clause that is indefinite. This is shown in the above example about someone eating the soup, with ‘someone’ being the indefinite correlate of ‘who’. The third type of sluicing construction refers to when the wh-word is not referring to a term in the antecedent but is referring to an object that corresponds to the preceding verb.
The final type of sluicing construction occurs when the elided material correspondent contrasts that of what is in the antecedent.
Theoretical approaches to sluicing There are two theoretical approaches that have been proposed for how sluicing occurs in languages. John R. Ross is the first examination of sluicing; he argued that sluicing involves regular wh-fronting followed by deletion of the sister constituent of the wh-phrase. This analysis has been expanded in greater detail by Jason Merchant, the most comprehensive treatise on sluicing to date. A second kind of analysis presents nonstructural analyses of ellipsis and does not posit unpronounced elliptical material. Yet another account of sluicing builds on the catena unit; the elided material is a catena.
Movement approach The movement approach states that sluicing is a product of the syntactic derivation in which an embedded clause is built in the syntax and then the wh-phrase within the embedded clause moves outside of the constituent to the position of SpecCP (specifier to the complementizer phrase). These steps are then followed by the deletion (and therefore non-pronunciation) of the tense phrase node that contains the rest of the clause. Evidence for this approach is seen in the connectivity effects of case marking, binding and preposition stranding as outlined by Merchant
Case-marking in sluicing Interrogative phrases in languages with morphological case-marking show the case appropriate to the understood verb as Ross and Merchant illustrated here with the German verb "schmeicheln" (to flatter), which governs the dative case on its object.
The sluiced wh-phrase must bear the same case that its counterpart in a non-elided structure would bear.
Preposition-stranding in sluicing It has been concluded that languages that forbid preposition-stranding in question formation also forbid it in sluicing, as the following German example shows:
Examples of languages in which p-stranding does not occur are Greek, German, and Russian. Much research has been done to determine if sluicing can allow for preposition-stranding in a non-preposition-stranding language. Stjepanović conducted research on whether that is possible in Serbo-Croatian, a non-preposition-stranding language. She concluded that there is not enough evidence to contradict the initial claim made by Ross. However, she found that a preposition may be lost or removed from a sentence under sluicing in Serbo-Croatian. More research is to be conducted to confirm the official cause of the loss of preposition.
Binding Jason Merchant demonstrates that binding supports the movement approach using the following sentence:
Every linguist1 criticized some of his1 work, but I’m not sure how much of his1 work [every linguist1 criticized t] In order for the second “his work” to refer to “every linguist” in the above example, it must be c-commanded by its antecedent within its local domain. Here, “his work” could not be coreferential with the subject: “every linguist” at the beginning of the sentence because it is outside of its local domain. This provides evidence that “his work” originally started off in the elided constituent where it could be c-commanded and in the local domain of that “every linguist” before it moved out of the clause.
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