On gapping: An analysis in terms of conceptual structure

This paper is concerned with the presentation of constraints in terms of Jackendoff's (1990) conceptual structure to accommodate the acceptability of English and Japanese gapped sentences. It is argued that the semantic aspects of Gapping are well captured by referring to the substitution mechanism based on the conceptual structure of the antecedent clause to get the conceptual structure of the gapped clause. The constraints prescribe the substitution possibilities and reflect perceptual strategies contributing to the difficulty of processing gapped sentences. This in turn accommodates some exceptional cases to the constraints and the difference between the English and the Japanese sentences.