On sluicing and island repair: sluicing is neither a ferry nor a bridge

Sluicing, which is typically understood as a process that involves wh-movement followed by TP ellipsis, is widely assumed to fix island violations. Languages that allow multiple wh­-fronting typically also allow multiple sluicing, but multiple sluicing – even though readily available – fails to preserve all properties otherwise associated with sluicing. Specifically, repair of island violations turns out to be very restricted in multiple sluicing constructions. In this paper we present a series of cases where multiple sluicing fails to fix island violations and argue that this is best explained if we simply discard the idea that island violations can be fixed in sluicing. We claim that the deleted TP does not need to be an exact copy of the antecedent clause and discuss some of the ideas that have been proposed to explain various atypical sluicing phenomena.