VP ellipsis and argument structure alternations: evidence from Muira Dargwa complex predicates

In this paper, I investigate the properties of an elliptical construction in the Nakh-Daghestanian language Muira Dargwa, in which only part of a complex predicate goes missing. I show that this process has a number of common features with Verb Phrase Ellipsis in English and related phenomena in other languages. Under an analysis of complex predicates where the light verb is the realization of the v head, the deleted constituent can be associated with the complement of v. Thus, the process diverges from similar phenomena in that the size of the ellipsis is smaller, allowing for a larger number of mismatches between antecedent and elliptical clauses.