VP Ellipsis and Constraints on Interpretation

Beginning with early work such as (Ross, 1967) and (Sag, 1976), the interpretation of ellipsis has been an enduring preoccupation of linguistics research. Many researchers have attempted to use ellipsis as a tool to gain insight into otherwise hidden structures and mechanisms underlying interpretation. According to Sag’s account of VP Ellipsis (VPE), the facts of ellipsis reflect logical aspects of the representation of pronouns, which are ambiguous between a lambda-bound and referential reading. On this influential view, ellipsis reveals an intricate machinery of lambda binding, pronoun indexing, and scope relations. Subsequent research has shed doubt on this pleasing picture – it has been shown that ellipsis interpretation is more flexible than Sag’s theory permits, and this has lead to the proposal of numerous alternative theories. In (Hardt, 1993), I proposed that VPE resolution be completely free, at least with respect to pronoun interpretation. This makes it possible to represent pronouns in a uniform way, without indexing or ambiguity. If VPE resolution is indeed free in this sense, then any constraints that appear to arise in ellipsis must instead be imposed by more general mechanisms.