Context and Well-Formedness: The Dynamics of Ellipsis

Abstract

This paper challenges the tradition of defining grammars and grammaticality independently of the context of utterance. Using dialogue phenomena, in particular elliptical utterances, it argues that the obvious dependence of such utterances on context to recover the intended interpretation should be regarded as an inherent characteristic of natural language grammars and thus applicable to the characterisation of grammaticality for all natural language strings. The paper adopts the framework of Dynamic Syntax which shifts the burden of syntactic explanation away from the definition of de-contextualised syntactic structures defined over strings of words towards the characterisation of syntax as a context-dependent, incremental process whereby interpretations of strings in context are progressively built up as an utterance proceeds. This change in the way syntax is conceived, together with a demonstration that the same processes for building interpretations are used in generation as in parsing, is shown to allow a unitary account of anaphora and a range of elliptical phenomena that is typically precluded in non-dynamic, structure-based theories of syntax. The paper ends by providing formal definitions of well-formedness with respect to context that preserve traditional notions of grammaticality while allowing more fine-grained characterisations of well-formedness to distinguish acceptability from full (un)grammaticality.

The interpretation of copular constructions in Chinese: Semantic underspecification and pragmatic enrichment

“…In the case of (29), what is missing in the conjunct clause can be recovered from the first clause, that is, the verb phrase xihuan Faguo-cai 'like French food', though the ''omission'' of this verb phrase may not be detected as easily as the omission of the object NP as in (30) In the framework of DS, ellipsis is taken as a copy of content or of parsing steps, namely, re-using some term or construct which the context makes available (see, e.g. Cann et al, 2005Cann et al, , 2007. When it comes to the elliptical structure in (29), what makes it interpretable is, as discussed in section 3, the anaphoric property of the copular morpheme which, as a predicate pro-form, enables hearers to establish a semantic relation between itself and the representation of content established from a preceding VP expression.…”

Grammar resources for modelling dialogue dynamically

“…In DS, these various mechanisms are brought together to provide a uniform basis for ellipsis construal (Cann et al 2005(Cann et al , 2007Purver at al. 2009).…”

“…Fragments and grammar As part of this shift into a procedural perspective, Cann et al (2007) define a concept of wellformedness with respect to context, opening the way for arbitrary fragments to be seen as wellformed as long as they occur in a particular environment. Under this definition, fragment construals and the context which they extend can both be partial and dependent on the presence of each other for wellformedness.…”

“…In Purver et al (2006) and Cann et al (2007) it is argued that context should then be accordingly defined as incorporating a record of (a) words processed, 1 (b) structures established, and (c) actions that led to this structure. This model of context is what allows DS to deal with ellipsis in a unified way as context-dependency (see Cann et al 2007;Purver et al 2006 for details).…”

“…This model of context is what allows DS to deal with ellipsis in a unified way as context-dependency (see Cann et al 2007;Purver et al 2006 for details). Storage of actions allows a straightforward account of cases of ellipsis that have been argued to provide crucial evidence for idiosyncratic syntactic/semantic restrictions.…”