Some Problematic Cases of VP Ellipsis

It has been widely assumed that VP ellipsis is governed by an identity condition: the elided VP is interpreted as an identical copy of another expression in surrounding discourse. For example, Sag (76) imposes an identity condition on Logical Form representations of VP's. A basic feature of this account is the requirement that a syntactic VP be available as the antecedent. This requirement is reflected in most subsequent accounts as well. In this paper I examine three cases of VP ellipsis in which the antecedent cannot be identified with any VP. These cases, which are illustrated using naturallyoccurring examples, present a fundamental problem for any of the standard approaches. I will argue that they receive a natural treatment in the system I have developed, in which VP ellipsis is treated by storing VP meanings in a discourse model.