NP ellipsis (effects) in Polish and Hungarian: FFs on Fs, Agree, and Chain Reduction

This paper offers an analysis of NP ellipsis with adjectival remnants in Polish and Hungarian based on an investigation of the featural composition of heads contained within the extended nominal and adjectival projections, as well as configurations resulting from an application of Agree and the Principle of Chain Reduction. Elliptical NPs are analysed as headed by categorising n heads lacking a complement. Whereas in Polish NP-internal agreement results in such heads being defective goals, treated as lower copies at the SM interface, and hence being unpronounced, in Hungarian, where most NP-internal modifiers do not agree with the head nouns, the content of the n head (i.e. {[Num: beta], [Case: gamma]} on the current assumptions) is realised on the final NP-internal modifier inside elliptical NPs. The difference between Polish and Hungarian with respect to the (lack of the) effect of NP-internal agreement on the elliptical patterns follows from the differences in the features of functional categories and the timing of Spell-Out/Transfer. The discussion suggests that the distinction between NP and DP languages should be taken into consideration in analyses of ellipsis in the nominal domain.