Sluicing Puzzles in Russian

The general goal of this paper is to explore the properties of sluicing (IPellipsis) in Russian and to see how the Russian data shed light on the general processes underlying the phenomenon of sluicing. The first issue we will address is what positions wh-remnants occupy in sluicing constructions in Russian, considering the properties of wh-movement in Russian. We will then turn to sluicing with multiple wh-remnants, which I will refer to as multiple sluicing, following Takahashi (1994). Here we will investigate how the interpretative properties of multiple interrogatives in Russian affect the multiple sluicing possibilities in this language. Finally, I will present the data showing that superiority effects emerge under sluicing in Russian. This is unexpected, given that Russian does not exhibit superiority effects in corresponding non-elliptical interrogatives. In addressing the question of what causes superiority effects under sluicing, I will propose an analysis which makes use of an independent property of ellipsis, namely, quantifier parallelism.