This work focuses on the form of ellipsis known as sluicing, a feature of interrogative clauses, such as in "Sally's out hunting - guess what!"; and "Someone called, but I can't tell you who". The phenomenon is studied across 24 languages to try to explain it in linguistic and behavioural terms.

A primary goal of contemporary theoretical linguistics is to develop a theory of the correspondence between sound (or gesture) and meaning. This sound-meaning correspondence breaks down completely in the case of ellipsis, and yet various forms of ellipsis are pervasive in natural language: words and phrases which should be in the linguistic signal go missing. How this should be possible is the focus of Jason Merchant's investigation. He focuses on the form of ellipsis known as sluicing, a common feature of interrogative clauses, such as in 'Sally's out hunting - guess what!'; and 'Someone called, but I can't tell you who'. It is the most frequently found cross-linguistic form of ellipsis. Dr Merchant studies the phenomenon across twenty-four languages, and attempts to explain it in linguistic and behavioural terms.

This book is a clearly written, very interesting exploration of sluicing. The author presents a number of well argued, novel ideas, and sheds new light on our understanding of a phenomenon linguists have been studying for quite a while. The author has done an excellent job in also providing a thorough overview of previous approaches, and in explaining how his analysis builds on and/or diverges from them. This is definitely a very important contribution to the field.