Sluicing in Bangla: A survey
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper surveys sluicing in Bangla, a language often described as Wh-in-situ and head-final. While Bangla typically lacks overt Wh-fronting, Wh-movement occurs in certain contexts, particularly in multi-clause structures. This paper examines how such movement influences sluicing, where a Wh-phrase appears with elliptical material in interrogative sentences. This paper describes that Bangla sluicing can be explained through two main approaches: copula-based structures and TP ellipsis. The copula-based analysis suggests that sluices involve a null pronoun and an unexpressed copula, reflecting Bangla’s characteristic lack of overt copulas in present-tense sentences. On the other hand, TP ellipsis involves the deletion of material after a Wh-phrase moves to a higher position in the clause. The paper also investigates two linguistic patterns in Bangla sluicing: case marking and number agreement. Data presented in this paper demonstrates that sluicing is a syntactic property in Bangla, with distinct patterns compared to languages like English.
Author: Khaled Karim
Institution: American University in Dubai
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7083321465
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