Ellipsis and higher-order unification

Abstract

We present a new method for characterizing the interpretive possibilities generated by elliptical constructions in natural language. Unlike previous analyses, which postulate ambiguity of interpretation or derivation in the full clause source of the ellipsis, our analysis requires no such hidden ambiguity. Further, the analysis follows relatively directly from an abstract statement of the ellipsis interpretation problem. It predicts correctly a wide range of interactions between ellipsis and other semantic phenomena such as quantifier scope and bound anaphora. Finally, although the analysis itself is stated nonprocedurally, it admits of a direct computational method for generating interpretations.This article is available through the Computation and Language E-Print Archive as cmp-lg/9503008, and also appears in Linguistics and Philosophy 14(4):399-452.cmp-lg/9503008

The Sticky Reading: VP Ellipsis Without Parallel Binding

“…If the e-site contains a bound pronoun, the corresponding pronoun in the antecedent VP must be bound. Sag's (1976) parallel binding has been highly influential, and most, perhaps all, theories of VPE found in the current literature that we are familiar with are tailored to enforce it in one way or another (e.g., Dalrymple, Shieber & Pereira 1991;Rooth 1992;Fiengo & May 1994;Heim & Kratzer 1998;Büring 2005). Contrary to this long-held assumption, however, we present data showing that there are instances of VPE that do not involve parallel binding, which we dub the 'sticky reading'.…”

“…Whereas their analysis is applicable to the above example, (5), cases like (3) and (6), where the pronoun in the antecedent is clearly a bound pronoun (or what they call a β -occurrence), do not seem to be amenable to the same explanation. Dalrymple et al (1991), on the other hand, suggest that in (6) the quantificational phrase every student takes scope over both sentences, thus binding both the pronoun in the antecedent VP and the pronoun in the e-site, as in the following paraphrase:…”

VP Ellipsis in Japanese

“…LF-reconstruction approach claims that the ellipsis site does not have syntactic structure, but it involves syntactic recovery at LF (Williams 1977, Fiengo andMay 1994, among others). On the other hand, the semantic analysis argues that the elided site does not have syntactic representation at all, either at PF or LF (Dalrymple, Shieber andPereira 1991, Hardt 1999, among others).…”

Robust spoken language understanding in a computer game

“…Constructing this function is the task of the dialogue management component of the system. To this end, it uses a technique reminiscent of Dalrymple et al (1991). In this example, the representations of preceding utterances are searched in reverse chronological order, to find an expression of type dialogue_act with a subexpression of type thing.…”