On category restrictions in across-the-boar and parasitic domains: evidence from Russian

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the nature of category restrictions in across-the-board and parasitic gaps. Postal (1993) observes that parasitic gaps in English exhibit category restrictions but across-the-board gaps do not show such restrictions. Munn (2001) argues that independent differences in the across-the-board and parasitic gap structures can account for category restrictions in parasitic gap constructions. Based on a new set of data from Russian contrastive coordination, the paper provides strong evidence in support of the argument that category restrictions should be attributed to the inherent properties of the extraction site, which in this case is the extraction site of the contrastive coordination.