An experimental perspective on embedded gapping in Persian

Abstract This paper empirically tests the embedding constraints on gapping in Persian. It has been suggested that gapping differs from other kinds of ellipsis in banning embedding. However, the first counter-examples in the literature come from Persian. Following up on previous experiments on embedded gapping in several languages, we report the results of two acceptability judgment tasks. Our results show that, while embedded gapping is overall acceptable in Persian, speakers’ acceptability judgements also vary depending on the semantic type of the embedding predicate, as well as the presence/absence of the complementizer. Data from Persian highlight that, despite the cross-linguistic variation observed with respect to the acceptability of embedded gapping, a general semantic constraint is at work across languages: non-factive verbs embed more easily than factive ones; inside factive verbs, semi-factive (cognitive) predicates embed more easily than true factive (emotive) ones. Moreover, whereas previous theoretical literature indicates no systematic preference for the absence or the presence of the complementizer in Persian, these new experimental data suggest a preference for complementizer drop. To account for the gradience observed in our experimental data, we propose an approach of gapping based on acceptability rather than grammaticality.