The preposition stranding generalisation: Challenging evidence from Cypriot Greek

This study aims at experimentally investigating the observation that Cypriot Greek challenges Merchant’s (1999:92) Preposition Stranding Generalisation according to which ‘[a] language L will allow P-stranding under sluicing iff L allows P-stranding under regular wh-movement.’ Indeed, an oral production data elicitation task revealed that, 81% of utterances native Cypriot-Greek speakers produced exhibited P-stranding within sluicing. In a subsequent acceptability judgment task, however, participants judged 50% of the utterances with preposition pied piping (the alternative option to P-stranding) to be more acceptable than Pstranding, whereas only 24% preferred P-stranding over P-pied-piping, and 24% deemed them to be equally acceptable.