Gapping and scope: A large-conjunct analysis

On most analyses, ellipsis should not affect scope. Yet, gapping allows a modals to take scope over a coordinate structure, a reading absent without gapping (see Siegel 1984). One analysis of this phenomenon, going back to Johnson (1994) and Lin (2002), treats wide-scope readings as not resulting from ellipsis, but from coordination below the modal, with the subject of the initial conjunct undergoing non-across-the-board movement to a nominative position outside the coordinate structure. We develop an alternative account in which gapping always involves coordination of clausal categories and hence ellipsis. The wide-scope reading of the modal results from standard scope extension. This reading requires gapping because scope extension out of coordinate structures (typically) requires multidominance and, as Belk et al. 2023 argue for right-node raising, multidominance creates linearization problems which can only be fixed by ellipsis. The net effect is that gapping is necessary to facilitate a wide-scope reading of the modal.