J a N V a N E I J C K a N D N I S S I M F R a N C E Z Verb-phrase Ellipsis in Dynamic Semantics

In this paper, we study Verb-phrase Ellipsis (VPE) and show its relationship to presupposition and its failure. We represent VPE by means of a dynamic semantics approach, using an extended version of Dynamic Predicate Logic (Groenendijk and Stokhof, 1991) which includes local variables and procedures. We focus on the representation of the strict/sloppy ambiguity in connection with ellipsis constructs, which comes \for free" in a procedural context. We also provide independent justiication for our representation of VPE in terms of procedure deenitions and their invocations. The relationship of VPE and presupposition sheds some new light on the arguments about the question whether VPE is syntactic or semantic in nature, as well as on the relative order of meaning determination and presupposition determination. As far as we know, the relation between VPE and presupposition has not been considered before in the literature. On the other hand, the idea to look at VPE as procedure invocation is not new; it can be found, e.g., in (Gardent, 1991). Our formalization is new, though. We show that the famous ambiguity in VPE, namely the distinction between strict readings vs. sloppy readings, is related to presuppositions and their failure. We formalize our theory using an extension of Dynamic Predicate Logic (DPL). The extension we propose includes the following constructs: Local variables Procedures with simple parameters (without recursion) Scope rules for free variables in procedures (dynamic vs. static scoping). To make the formal connection with presupposition, we combine 1