Graph Theory - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 182

9.5 Subject Gapping and Verb Gapping
A veritable pinnacle of grammatical complexity is gapping (cf. Kapfer 2010).
In contrast to sentential arguments and modifiers, which are extrapropositional
(7.5.1, Sects. 11.3-11.6), gapping is an intrapropositional 9 construction: one
or more gapping parts share a subject, a verb, or an object with a complete
sentence; in addition, there is noun gapping, in which several adnominals share
a noun.
In common practice, gapping is rarely used. 10 Yet native speakers from a
wide range of languages 11 confidently confirm that the various forms of gap-
ping exist in their native tongue. This allows only one conclusion: gapping
must be a very basic if not primitive construction which closely mirrors the
underlying thought structure.
From the time-linear viewpoint of DBS, the most basic structural distinction
between different kinds of gapping in English is whether the filler precedes or
follows the gap(s). Subject and verb gapping have in common that the filler
comes first. Consider the following examples:
9.5.1 S UBJECT GAPPING
Bob ate an apple, # walked the dog, and # read the paper.
The subject of the complete sentence, Bob ,issharedbygappedpartswhich
follow, with # marking the gaps. 12
9.5.2 V ERB GAPPING
Bob ate an apple, Jim # a pear, and Bill # a peach.
The verb of the complete sentence, ate , is shared by gapped parts which fol-
low, with # marking the gaps. 13
ing the tree. DBS, in contrast, leaves the graph unchanged and handles the different word orders of
the iterated object sentence and the corresponding unbounded dependency by means of alternative
navigations through the same NAG.
9 The main parts of an extrapropositional construction have different prn values, while in an intrapropo-
sitional construction all proplets share the same prn value.
10 März (2005) estimates that only 0.25% of the sentences in the LIMAS corpus contain gapping con-
structions.
11 They include Albanian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, English, French, German, Georgian, Italian,
Japanese, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Tagalog.
12 Less than 0.3% of the sentences in the BNC show this construction of subject gapping. Thanks to T.
Proisl, who provided the BNC frequencies for this and the following gapping constructions.
13 Less than 0.01% of the sentences in the BNC show this construction of verb gapping.