In this paper I argue that English exceptive constructions introduced by except can be derived from full clauses by ellipsis. I offer a compositional analysis for this clausal exceptive construction. I propose that except introduces quantification over possible situations and the clause following it provides the restriction for this quantification. I show how the analysis developed here derives the inferences except contributes to sentences it occurs in and the restrictions on its use. I also show how this approach captures certain cases which traditional approaches to the semantics of exceptives do not, such as cases where an except-phrase contains a PP or multiple syntactic constituents. The approach I propose correctly captures the NPI licensing facts inside except-phrases. In addition, this is the first approach to the semantics of exceptives that correctly captures the contribution of modal phrases such as possibly inside except-phrases.

在本文中，我认为由except引入的英语例外结构可以通过省略从完整的子句中导出。我对这个从句例外结构进行了成分分析。我建议except引入对可能情况的量化，并且其后面的子句提供了对这种量化的限制。我展示了这里开发的分析如何得出推论，除了对其出现的句子及其使用的限制做出贡献之外。我还展示了这种方法如何捕获传统例外语义方法无法捕获的某些情况，例如例外短语包含 PP 或多个句法成分的情况。我建议的方法可以正确捕获except短语内的 NPI 许可事实。此外，这是第一个处理例外语义的方法，它正确捕获了情态短语（例如可能在except短语内）的贡献。