Directionality and the Lexicon: Evidence from Gapping DRAFT 1.0; September 25, 2000 Cem Bozsahin. Middle East Technical University bozsahin@metu.edu.tr .. ’units’ and ’grammatical facts’ are only different names for different aspects of the same general fact: the operation of linguistic oppositions. So much so that it would be perfectly possible to tackle the problem of units by beginning with grammatical facts. F. de Saussure, Cours. 1 Introduction The relationship between gapping (identical element deletion) and word order has been a focus of intensive research since the work of Ross (1970). In serialization of [S]ubject, [O]bject and [V]erb in a particular language, forward V gapping (deletion of identical verbs on the right) is a sign of word orders that license leftward grouping VO, and back- ward V gapping is a sign of rightward grouping OV (Ross, 1970, p.251): “The order in which gapping operates depends on the order of elements at the time that the rule applies; if the identical elements are on the left branches, gapping operates forward; if they are on the right branches, it operates backward.” Table 1 Ross’s classification of Gapping Type Base Pattern A SVO SVO & SVO SVO & SO (forward gapping) B SVO SVO & SVO SVO & SO SOV & SO C SOV SOV & SOV SO & SOV (backward gapping) D SOV SOV & SOV SO & SOV *SO & SVO The following typology emerges for the most common word orders SOV (1), SVO (2) and VSO (3) (data from (Steedman, 2000)): (1) a. Japanese: SO & SOV but *SOV & SO b. Ken-ga Naomi-o, Erika-ga Sara-o tazuneta Ken-NOM Naomi-ACC Erika-NOM Sara-ACC visit-PAST.CONCL ’Ken visited Naomi, and Erika Sara.’ c. *Ken-ga Naomi-o tazunete, Erika-ga Sara-o (2) a. English: SVO & SO but *SO & SVO 1