In this article, we claim that syntactic objects undergoing ellipsis can be targeted by both narrow syntactic and PF operations. We base this conclusion on experimental evidence from the interaction between single conjunct agreement and verb-echo answers in South Slavic, which we show to be derived via verb-stranding VP ellipsis. Adopting the view that Vocabulary Insertion replaces Q-variables on lexical heads (Halle 1991) and ellipsis is a syntactic operation which deletes Q-variables (Saab 2022), we demonstrate that constituents properly included in the ellipsis site can undergo Internal Merge in the narrow syntax, and can participate in PF processes from the derived position. The interaction between ellipsis, Internal Merge and Agree-Copy that accounts for these patterns of data follows naturally within the Distributed Ellipsis approach.

Even though a verb can assign a variety of thematic roles to the subject, the most typical role for a subject is that of an agent or that of an experiencer for verbs of perception and mental inference. In this paper, we describe constructions where verbs that typically select agent or experiencer subjects occur with subjects expressing thematic roles typical of adverbials: instrument, time or place. We refer to those subjects as permissive subjects. On the other hand, it is argued that in South Slavic languages, non-agents (and non-experiencers) do not show such a strong tendency to occur in the subject position. We performed a translation task to answer the following research question: What range of structures occur in Bosnian translation equivalents of the following English constructions with permissive subjects: Period sees, Money buys, Object seats number, Object sleeps number, Book/ Album/Record sells copies? The quantitative analysis showed that some of the most frequent translation strategies include the following: middle constructions, passive constructions and constructions where the English permissive subject becomes an adverbial in the Bosnian translation equivalent. Moreover, translation equivalents where the English permissive subject is translated as a Bosnian non-agentive/ permissive subject are rather frequent too. Nevertheless, our qualitative analysis shows that the choice of a translation equivalent for the target construction depends on the English target construction itself. For example, in the case of some combinations, we show a correlation between the thematic meaning of a particular permissive subject in English and the choice of a translation equivalent.

Abstract:Agreement with coordinated subjects in Slavic languages has recently seen a rapid increase in theoretical and experimental approaches, contributing to a wider theoretical discussion on the locus of agreement in grammar (cf. Marušič, Nevins, and Saksida 2007; Bošković 2009; Marušič, Nevins, and Badecker 2015). This paper revisits the theoretical predictions proposed for conjunction agreement in a group of South Slavic languages, with a special focus on gender agreement. The paper is based on two experiments involving speakers of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) and Slovenian (Sln). Experiment 1 is an elicited production experiment investigating preverbal-conjunct agreement, while Experiment 2 investigates postverbal-conjunct agreement. The data provide experimental evidence discriminating between syntax proper and distributed-agreement models in terms of their ability to account for preverbal highest-conjunct agreement and present a theoretical mechanism for the distinction between default agreement (which has a fixed number and gender, independent of the value of each conjunct) and resolved agreement (which computes number and gender based on the values of each conjunct and must resolve potential conflicts). Focusing on the variability in the gender-agreement ratio across nine combinations, the experimental results for BCS and Sln morphosyntax challenge the notion of gender markedness that is generally posited for South Slavic languages.