Abstract
Sloppy identity under ellipsis is generally attributed to the pronoun in ellipsis being a bound variable. However, sloppy identity can be licensed in structural configurations in which variable binding is ordinarily blocked. This paper provides a solution for this mismatch by reanalyzing the pronouns with the unexpected sloppy readings as E-type pronouns. Under the proposed analysis, the distribution of such pronouns is correctly predicted. It will also be shown that the analysis is successfully extended to sloppy identity in association-with-focus cases.
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Tomioka, S. A SLOPPY IDENTITY PUZZLE. Natural Language Semantics 7, 217–241 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008309217917
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008309217917