Ellipsis in Languages of the Caucasus

This chapter deals with ellipsis, a phenomenon whereby some expected material goes missing in an utterance. The chapter overviews types of ellipsis frequently addressed in the literature: ellipsis in the noun phrase; argument omission; VP ellipsis; modal complement ellipsis; ellipsis in complex predicates; gapping, pseudogapping, and right node raising; ellipsis in comparative constructions, stripping; and ellipsis involving negation, sluicing and its generalizations, and fragment answers. It proceeds to review the occurrence of, and peculiarities exhibited by, these ellipsis varieties in a sample of the languages of the Caucasus. A number of ellipsis varieties that have not been earlier discussed in the literature but are present in some languages of the Caucasus are addressed as well. The data show that the languages of the Caucasus do not show a uniform typological profile as far as ellipsis is concerned. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the relevance of the presented data for theories of ellipsis.