Abstract

We explore the power of type-logical grammar as a linguistic theory, specifically, of a new tentative development inside the framework—a “symmetricized” Lambek Calculus, due to [Moortgat2005]. The basis for our discussion is an account we give for constructions involving questions and—in particular—involving sluicing; it seeks to solve puzzles these constructions have been setting for linguistic theory. Two things in the organization of grammar are of interest here: first, a uniform system joining structures from the surface side (syntactic) and structures from the “mind side” (discourse)—we call MERGE and co-MERGE the relations by which the former and the latter structures are arranged; second, a view on the circumstances of performing MOVE (by Syntax) from the type-logical perspective. As it is usual for type-logical grammars, the theory is conscious of semantics. We refer to examples from Japanese, on one side, and from English and Russian, on the other