Docs: Preposition stranding in relative clause/question: ellipsis or nonprojectivity?

[nschneid]

This query reveals about 50 EWT instances with the nonprojectivity analysis, where the stranded preposition is a dependent of the relativizer. In other cases similar sentences are treated as ellipsis. Which analysis is correct?

that-RC

"a thing that you pay for" has the nonprojective analysis:

obl(pay, that)
case(that, for)

Whereas the ellipsis analysis is seen e.g. in "outcomes that they had little to do with"

obl(had, that)
obl(do, with)

wh-clause

This inconsistency also happens with wh-initial (free relative?) clauses:

"I have no idea what you're talking about": nonprojective

acl(idea, talking)
obl(talking, what)
case(what, about)

"what you are referring to": ellipsis

acl:relcl(what, referring)
obl(referring, to)

wh-question

"what are you having problems with?": nonprojective

nmod(problems, what)
case(what, with)

"what did you guys vote for?": ellipsis, with pronoun attached as obj instead of obl

obj(vote, what)
obl(vote, for)

See also #454 & #482.

[dan-zeman]

When the pronoun is present in the clause, it is not ellipsis and the preposition should be attached to the pronoun despite the nonprojectivity.

[jnivre]

Quite right.

[nschneid]

OK—I couldn't find this in the guidelines, so it should probably be added somewhere!

Looks like there are at least several dozen sentences with a pronoun that need to be corrected.

What about "anyplace you want to spend more time at"? "Anyplace" is tagged as ADV.

[dan-zeman]

Not sure about _anyplace_. I think it is not totally unheard of that a preposition combines with a word that lies in the gray zone between nouns and adverbs and is possibly tagged ADV. But one would have to search for examples. And the English-specific guidelines should probably mention the cases mentioned in this issue.

[amir-zeldes]

Since 'place' is also a noun, maybe this is NOUN in context? The same could be said about home/NOUN vs. home/ADV depending on context.