Experimental evidence for argument ellipsis as the only derivation of Russian verb-stranding constructions

Journal of Slavic Linguistics. 2026.

Kasenov D., Rudnev P.

Russian verb-stranding constructions are argued to exemplify either verb-stranding VP ellipsis (Gribanova 2013b) or argument ellipsis (Bailyn 2017; Landau 2020b). As recent work shows, the debate between verb-stranding VP ellipsis and argument ellipsis is murky due to various confounds in the employed diagnostics (Simpson 2023; Landau 2023b). This paper reports on an acceptability judgment study focused on whether the semantic type of verbal arguments influences acceptability of verb-stranding constructions (as has been observed for Hebrew by Landau 2018). The results suggest that Russian verb-stranding constructions are sensitive to the semantic type of the elided argument, supporting the argument ellipsis approach. Moreover, if a VP ellipsis derivation were available, the sentences would have an acceptable parse. The reported study thus supports the view that argument ellipsis is the only available structure for Russian verb-stranding constructions with overt subjects. We contrast the findings with Russian verb-stranding constructions that involve polarity focus and conclude that the scope of our claim is limited to verb-stranding constructions that do not involve syntactic head movement (assuming a distinction between types of head movement proposed by Harizanov & Gribanova 2019).

Keywords: русский язык, Russian, syntax, экспериментальный синтаксис, аргументный эллипсис, argument ellipsis, verb stranding VP ellipsis, acceptability judgment study