Sluicing in Bangla: A survey

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.