Nominal Ellipsis of Hybrid Nouns in Serbian

Abstract

This paper investigates nominal ellipsis of hybrid nouns (HNs) in number mismatch contexts in Serbian and argues in support of the following two theoretical points: (i)  formal gender of at least some HNs is introduced by the √ROOT + n complex (e.g., Kramer 2016), and (ii) at least some concord is post-syntactic (Kramer 2010, Noyer 1997, Norris 2014 etc.). The main empirical observation is that ellipsis of Serbian HNs in number mismatch contexts is, in contrast to regular nouns, not fully available. I propose that these facts reveal that nominal ellipsis in Serbian has two possible sources: a) a nominal constituent can be elided (PF-deletion), or b) a null nominal proform can be used (e.g. Merchant 2014), and that the availability of these two strategies is constrained by the number of the antecedent.