This study investigates the behaviour of the negation in the ellipsis type of gapping and shows that gapping sentences with a negation in the first conjunct but not in the second can receive one of the following readings: (¬A&¬B), (¬A&B), (¬(A&B)). Which reading arises depends on phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors. The book proposes a syntactic copying analysis of gapping, which, combined with semantic‐pragmatic criteria such as balanced contrast between the conjuncts, accounts for the various readings. A thorough investigation of different subtypes of negation – predicat ... More

This study investigates the behaviour of the negation in the ellipsis type of gapping and shows that gapping sentences with a negation in the first conjunct but not in the second can receive one of the following readings: (¬A&¬B), (¬A&B), (¬(A&B)). Which reading arises depends on phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors. The book proposes a syntactic copying analysis of gapping, which, combined with semantic‐pragmatic criteria such as balanced contrast between the conjuncts, accounts for the various readings. A thorough investigation of different subtypes of negation – predicate‐propositional‐illocutionary – further determines the structure of the resulting gapping structure.