Sluicing in Dakkhini: A syntactic analysis

Abstract

Sluicing has received much attention in literature since Ross (1969). Merchant (2001) reinvented it. According to Ross sluicing is commonly analysed as involving movement of the interrogative phrase to Spec–CP followed by deletion of TP. Van Craenenbroeck and Liptak (2013) propose that whether a language exhibits genuine sluicing should be predictable from the syntax of a language wh-questions in non–elliptical contexts. This article explores the phenomenon of sluicing in Dakkhini. The approach used for the syntactic analysis of sluicing in Japanese given by Kizu (1997, 2005) is applied to Dakkhini and the limitations are looked into. The other section of the article deals with Manetta (2006) proposal that the wh-questions takes the verb initial position and in case of sluicing the wh-phrase takes this position and then vP is deleted. Some test developed by Manetta (2013) for diagnosing the sluicing structure in Hindi-Urdu are used to check whether the elements involved in sluicing are part of vP or a bigger constituent TP. Finally the copy theory of movement used to explain sluicing in Dakkhini.