The debate between representationalists and anti-representationalists as I construe it in this chapter is a debate about whether truth-conditions are or should be assigned directly to natural language sentences (NLSs) – the anti-representationalist view – or whether they are or should be assigned instead to mental representations (MRs) that are related in some appropriate way to these NLSs. On the representationalist view, these MRs are related to NLSs in virtue of the fact that the MRs are the output of an (...) interpretive process that has as its input both representations of the lexico-syntactic structure of the NLSs and relevant non-linguistic assumptions that are accessible in the current conversational context. On this conception, language interpretation is a process of developing sentential forms into fully propositional forms, and it is these propositional forms that are the primary bearers of truth-conditional content, and are candidates for model-theoretic interpretation, not the NLSs themselves. (shrink)

Pseudogapping is no misnomer. Despite the many tempting similarities, Gapping and Pseudogapping are distinct constructions. Pseudogapping is a special instance of VP Ellipsis, while Gapping, I will argue, is a special instance of across-the-board movement. Squeezing Gapping into across-the-board movement has its own discomforts, however, which I will suggest can be remedied by re-tailoring our syntax to include string-based output constraints. I give a sketch of one such alteration that involves apparent Left Branch Condition violations.

VP-ellipsis and pseudogapping in English show a previously unnoticed asymmetry in their tolerance for voice mismatch: while VP-ellipsis allows mismatches in voice between the elided VP and its antecedent, pseudogapping does not. This difference is unexpected under current analyses of pseudogapping, which posit that pseudogapping is a kind of VP-ellipsis. I show that this difference falls out naturally if the target of deletion in the two cases differs slightly: in VP-ellipsis, a node lower than [voi(ce)] is (...) deleted, while in pseudogapping a node containing [voi] is deleted. Moreover, this analysis accounts for a new observation concerning the distribution of floating quantifiers in these two constructions. (shrink)

VP ellipsis generally requires a syntactically matching antecedent. However, many documented examples exist where the antecedent is not appropriate. Kehler, 533–575. 2002, Coherence, Reference and the Theory of Grammer, CSLI Publications. Stanford.) proposed an elegant theory which predicts a syntactic antecedent for an elided VP is required only for a certain discourse coherence relation, not for cause-effect relations. Most of the data Kehler used to motivate his theory come from corpus studies and thus do not consist of true minimal (...) pairs. We report five experiments testing predictions of the coherence theory, using standard minimal pair materials. The results raise questions about the empirical basis for coherence theory because a syntactically-matching antecedent is preferred for all coherence relations, not just resemblance relations. Further, strict identity readings, which should not be available when a syntactic antecedent is required, are influenced by parallelism per se, holding the discourse coherence relation constant. This draws into question the causal role of coherence relations in processing VP ellipsis. (shrink)

The term ellipsis has been applied to a wide range of phenomena across the centuries, from any situation in which words appear to be missing (in St. Isidore’s definition), to a much narrower range of particular constructions. Ellipsis continues to be of central interest to theorists of language exactly because it represents a situation where the usual form/meaning mappings, the algorithms, structures, rules, and constraints that in nonelliptical sentences allow us to map sounds and gestures onto their corresponding (...) meanings, break down. In fact, in ellipsis, the usual mappings seems to be entirely absent. In ellipsis, there is meaning without form. VP-ellipsis and sluicing are two of the best investigated instances of ellipsis and generally show remarkable similarities in their licensing requirements, both usually necessitating some equivalent antecedent which is subject to some kind of parallelism. It is no exaggeration to say that debates over the nature of this parallelism have formed the core of most of the generative work on ellipsis over the last forty years. Almost all conceivable positions on the parallelism question have been explored and advanced, and these debates are important exactly because they are often used to argue for the necessity of one or another kind of linguistic representation. Most of the debate is located in the arena of semantics and abstract syntactic structures—it is clear that surface syntactic or phonological parallelism is not at stake—and as such, elliptical structures often play an important role in fundamental ontological debates in linguistics. The logic is clear: if the parallelism or identity conditions found in ellipsis resolution require reference to certain kinds of objects, then our theories of linguistic competence must countenance objects of that kind. In generative linguistics, research has focused on two sets of constructions. Central examples of the first set, drawn from English, include sluicing as in (1), verb phrase ellipsis (VP-ellipsis) as in (2), and NP-ellipsis (or N -ellipsis) 2 as in (3).. (shrink)

One of the most startling, and hence theoretically challenging, properties of wh-movement in Sluicing is that it can move wh-phrases out of islands, an important observation which goes back to Ross (1969). Equally challenging is the fact that similar wh-movement out of VP Ellipsis sites remains for the most part illicit. Briefly put, it seems that for a wide range of cases, deletion of an IP containing an island voids the effect of that island for wh-movement, while deletion of (...) a VP containing an island does not. This chapter investigates one aspect of this puzzling dichotomy with respect to island repair, and attempts to show that an interesting and partly novel range of data follow if island deviancies come about due to illicit traces of intermediate movement, working in tandem with a constraint on ellipsis operative in structures that host wh-movement. I will argue that a wide range of islands are indeed active at PF, but not in the way that this claim has usually been understood thus far. Instead of the island node itself being responsible for the degradation in acceptability, I will show that the data support the idea that it is the traces of wh-movement outside the island itself which trigger a PF-crash. I begin with some relevant Background on Sluicing, given in section 6.1, before taking up the Sluicing data in section 6.2 and the VP Ellipsis facts in section 6.3. (shrink)

This paper concerns the question whether reflexives can have strict readings in VP-ellipsis. It is argued that the possibility for strict interpretation is determined by a syntactic factor: subordination of the elided clause relative to the antecedent clause facilitates strict interpretation, whereas coordination disfavors it. This contrast is shown to be predictable by theories of syntactic reconstruction which assume that a surface reflexive corresponds to a bound variable at the point of ellipsis reconstruction, and where the binder has (...) scope over a subordinated ellipsis but not over a coordinated ellipsis. One possibility is that the binder is the reflexive itself, moved at LF. A further factor, namely the possibility of speakers reinterpreting the ellipsis as a deep anaphor, accounts for why strict readings are in fact weakly acceptable in coordinated ellipsis. Previous accounts of ellipsis and reflexives are evaluated in light of the new data. (shrink)

Elided VPs and their antecedent VPs can mismatch in voice, with passive VPs being elided under apparent identity with active antecedent VPs, and vice versa. Such voice mismatches are not allowed in any other kind of ellipsis, such as sluicing and other clausal ellipses. These latter facts indicate that the identity relation in ellipsis is sensitive to syntactic form, not merely to semantic form. The VP-ellipsis facts fall into place if the head that determines voice is external (...) to the phrase being elided, here argued to be v P; such an account can only be framed in approaches that allow for the separation of syntactic features from the heads on which they are morphologically realized. Alternatives to this syntactic, articulated view of ellipsis and voice either undergenerate or overgenerate. (shrink)

We investigate the underexplored question of when speakers make use of the omission phenomenon verb phrase ellipsis (VPE) in English given that the full form is also available to them. We base the interpretation of our results on the well-established information-theoretic Uniform Information Density (UID) hypothesis: Speakers tend to distribute processing effort uniformly across utterances and avoid regions of low information by omitting redundant material through, e.g., VPE. We investigate the length of the omittable VP and its predictability in (...) context as sources of redundancy which lead to larger or deeper regions of low information and an increased pressure to use ellipsis. We use both naturalness rating and self-paced reading studies in order to link naturalness patterns to potential processing difficulties. For the length effects our rating and reading results support a UID account. Surprisingly, we do not find an effect of the context on the naturalness and the processing of VPE. We suggest that our manipulation might have been too weak or not effective to evidence such an effect. (shrink)

It is well known that in Sluicing constructions wh-dependencies can cross certain projections that are otherwise barriers to movement (Ross (1969), Chomsky (1972)). This fact would follow under the assumption that the relevant barriers are somehow deactivated when phonologically deleted ('island repair'). The problem, however, is that another form of phonological deletion (VP Ellipsis, VPE) seems to be impossible in certain contexts where Sluicing allows for island repair (Chung et al. (1995), Merchant (1999)).

Despite the attention that various forms of ellipsis have received inthe literature, the conditions under which a representation of anutterance may serve as a suitable referent for interpreting subsequentelliptical forms remain poorly understood. This fundamental questionremains as a point of contention, particularly because there are datato support various conflicting approaches that attempt to characterizethese conditions within a single module of language processing. Weshow a previously unnoticed pattern in VP-ellipsis data with respectto the type of coherence relation extant between (...) the antecedentand elided clauses. This pattern is explained by an account of howellipsis resolution processes interact with the inference processesunderlying the establishment of these relations. The analysis alsoexplains a similar yet distinct pattern in gapping constructions whichare not accounted for by purely syntactic approaches. Finally, wediscuss event reference and compare the resulting account to thedichotomy of types of anaphora posited by HanSag. (shrink)

The VP ellipsis (VPE) ‘remnants’ did too/did in sentences like (1) and (2) below can have two different readings depending on whether the reflexive pronoun himself covertly recovered at the VPE site is interpreted as referring back to John (the strict reading) or to Bill (the sloppy reading).

If all dependent expressions were adjacent some variety of immediate constituent analysis would suffice for grammar, but syntactic and semantic mismatches are characteristic of natural language; indeed this is a, or the, central problem in grammar. Logical categorial grammar reduces grammar to logic: an expression is well-formed if and only if an associated sequent is a theorem of a categorial logic. The paradigmatic categorial logic is the Lambek calculus, but being a logic of concatenation the Lambek calculus can only capture (...) discontinuous dependencies when they are peripheral. In this paper we present the displacement calculus, which is a logic of intercalation as well as concatenation and which subsumes the Lambek calculus. On the empirical side, we apply the new calculus to discontinuous idioms, quantification, VP ellipsis, medial extraction, pied-piping, appositive relativisation, parentheticals, gapping, comparative subdeletion, cross-serial dependencies, reflexivization, anaphora, dative alternation, and particle shift. On the technical side, we prove that the calculus enjoys Cut-elimination. (shrink)

This paper argues in favor of two claims: (a) that Scope Shifting Operations (Quantifier Raising and Quantifier Lowering) are restricted by economy considerations, and (b) that the relevant economy considerations compare syntactic derivations that end up interpretively identical. These ideas are shown to solve several puzzles having to do with the interaction of scope with VP ellipsis, coordination, and the interpretation of bare plurals. Further, the paper suggests a way of dealing with the otherwise puzzling clause-boundedness of Quantifier Raising.

Rooth & Partee (1982) and Rooth (1985) have shown that the English-specific rule-by-rule system of PTQ can be factored out into function application plus two transformations for resolving type mismatch (type lifting and variable binding). Building on these insights, this article proposes a universal system for type-driven translation, by adding two more innovations: local type determination for gaps (generalizing Montague 1973) and a set of semantic filters (extending Cooper 1983). This system, dubbed Cross-Linguistic Semantics (XLS), is shown to account for (...) various phenomena — including scope relations in English and Greenlandic Eskimo, internally headed relative clauses in Lakhota, serial verbs in Yoruba and VP ellipsis in English. (shrink)

In addition to the standard ellipsis process known as VP-ellipsis, another ellipsis process, known as pseudo-gapping, was first brought to the fore-front in the 1970’s by Sag (1976) and N. Levin (1986). This process elides subparts of a VP, as in (1): (1) Although I don’t like steak, I do___pizza. Developing ideas of K.S. Jayaseelan (Jayaseelan (1990)), Howard Lasnik has developed an analysis in which pseudo-gapping, which, in some instances, looks as though it is simply deleting a (...) verb, is in fact deletion of a verb phrase, so that pseudo-gapping is really a probe into the structure of the verb phrase. I will examine pseudo-gapping in detail, and will show that it truly is a gold mine of insight into a number of fundamental issues in syntax. More concretely, I will demonstrate that a careful, detailed analysis of this process will bear on the derivational level at which Principle A of the binding theory applies, as well as the amount of explicit encoding within syntactic representations of informational structure, particularly focus. The paper will also re-assess Lasnik’s conclusion that pseudo-gapping provides evidence for Larson’s (1988) V-raising to a higher empty V position, a case of head movement, and will show that the movement involved is actually a case of remnant movement, or XP-movement. (shrink)

In Fox and Lappin (2005a) we propose Property Theory with Curry Typing (PTCT) as a formal framework for the semantics of natural language. PTCT allows finegrained distinctions of meaning without recourse to modal notions like (im)possible worlds. It also supports a unified dynamic treatment of pronominal anaphora and VP ellipsis, as well as related phenomena such as gapping and pseudo-gapping.

The HOU-based analysis of ellipsis was shown byDalrymple et al. (1991) and Shieber et al. (1996) to correctly capture thecomplex interaction of VP-ellipsis, scope and anaphora and claimed toextend to further related phenomena. When applied to deaccenting, theanalysis makes a strong prediction, namely that all anaphors occurringin the deaccented part of a deaccented utterance are parallelanaphors, i.e., anaphors that resolve to their parallel counterpart inthe source. I argue that this prediction is supported by the data andshow that it (...) correctly captures the interaction of deaccenting withanaphora, (in)definiteness and focus. (shrink)

This paper establishes the novel generalization that Subject -Auxiliary Inversion in comparative clauses requires the co-presence of VP-ellipsis, and argues that this peculiar fact follows from a disjunctive formulation of an ECP that applies at PF. The analysis relies crucially on the presence of an intermediate trace of the A'-moved comparative operator at the edge of VP, which is subject to the ECP at PF, and which interacts with the head movement involved in SAI. This trace is unlicensed in (...) structures with I-to-C movement, but VP-ellipsis repairs the violation, providing further evidence that ellipsis can repair otherwise deviant structures. (shrink)

This paper presents a brief argument from the interaction of weak crossover (WCO), antecedent-contained deletion (ACD), and other facts of VP-ellipsis that subjects are base-generated in a predicateinternal position but move through an intermediate A-position on their way to their final landing site (the specifier of TP) and can take scope in this intermediate position.

This paper presents the treatment of anaphora in generative grammar. After a broad review of of the different theories covered under the term, it provides an overview of the history of the treatment of anaphora in generative grammar. It then discusses Ariel’s theory of accessibility and shows how it can account for the choice of some of the anaphoric expressions provided in the text. In a final section, the paper presents the author’s recent work on the choice between verbal anaphors. (...) It is shown that accessibility can account for some aspects of the choice but is not sufficient. Further constraints on the choice are proposed in terms of the notion of Question Under Discussion, for which experimental evidence is adduced. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with constraints on the interpretation of pronominal anaphora, in particular Condition B effects. It aims to contribute to a particular approach, initiated by Reinhart (Anaphora and semantic interpretation, 1983) and further developed elsewhere. It proposes a modification of Reinhart’s Interface Rule, and argues that the resulting theory compares favorably with others, while being compatible with independently motivated general hypotheses about the interaction between different interpretive mechanisms.

Building on the success of the bestselling first edition, the second edition of this textbook provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the major issues in Principles and Parameters syntactic theory, including phrase structure, the lexicon, case theory, movement, and locality conditions. Includes new and extended problem sets in every chapter, all of which have been annotated for level and skill type. Features three new chapters on advanced topics including vP shells, object shells, control, gapping and ellipsis and an (...) additional chapter on advanced topics in binding. Offers a brief survey of both Lexical-Functional Grammar and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Succeeds in strengthening the reader's foundational knowledge, and prepares them for more advanced study. Supported by an instructor's manual and online resources for students and instructors, available at www.blackwellpublishing.com/carnie. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a framework capable of dealing with anaphora and ellipsis which is both general and algorithmic. This generality is ensured by the compination of two general ideas. First, we use a dynamic semantics which reperent effects using a monad structure. Second we treat scopes flexibly, extending them as needed. We additionally implement this framework as an algorithm which translates abstract syntax to logical formulas. We argue that this framework can provide a unified account of a (...) large number of anaphoric phenomena. Specifically, we show its effectiveness in dealing with pronominal and VP-anaphora, strict and lazy pronouns, lazy identity, bound variable anaphora, e-type pronouns, and cataphora. This means that in particular we can handle complex cases like Bach–Peters sentences, which require an account dealing simultaneously with several phenomena. We use Haskell as a meta-language to present the theory, which also consitutes an implementation of all the phenomena discussed in the paper. To demonstrate coverage, we propose a test suite that can be used to evaluate computational approaches to anaphora. (shrink)

This paper presents a generalization of the standard notions of left monotonicity (on the nominal argument of a determiner) and right monotonicity (on the VP argument of a determiner). Determiners such as “more than/at least as many as” or “fewer than/at most as many as”, which occur in so-called propositional comparison, are shown to be monotone with respect to two nominal arguments and two VP-arguments. In addition, it is argued that the standard Generalized Quantifier analysis of numerical determiners such as (...) “more than three/at least three” is a simplification which ignores the fundamental parallellism with the propositional comparatives. Furthermore, the symmetric monotonicity configurations of the existential “some” and “no” are shown to be straightforwardly related to those of numerical comparatives with the limit numeral zero, whereas the asymmetric configurations of universal “all” and “not all” involve the extra complicating mechanism of polarity reversal, which is related to Keenan's notion of co-intersectivity (as opposed to intersectivity). A second aim of the paper is to investigate some of the factors reducing the inferential potential of determiners. Different types of comparative determiners and their modification will be considered in detail. In addition, a systematic interaction will be revealed between the monotonicity properties of the determiners in propositional comparatives and the differ ent types of ellipsis in the “than”-complement. Different degrees of ellipsis are defined in terms of informational dependencies between the “than”-complement and the main clause. A general balancing mechanism is observed by virtue of which an increase in informational dependency is compensated by a reduction of the inferential potential of the comparative determiner. The structure of the paper is as follows. Part two deals with propositional comparison and introduces the two basic monotonicity configurations. Part three distinguishes three types of informational dependencies or ellipsis between the “than”-complement and the main clause. In Section 3.1 the “than”-complement only contains a VP constituent, whereas in Section 3.2. it only consists of a nominal constituent. Section 3.3 considers more complex instances of multiple dependencies. Section 3.4 then looks at the interaction of these three types with the modifier “proportionally”. Part four presents the two basic monotonicity configurations for numerical comparison, whereas part five deals with more complex numerical determiners. Bounding determiners, such as “between five and ten”, and other boolean combinations are discussed in Section 5.1, whereas Section 5.2 goes into approximative determiners involving modifiers such as “only” or “almost”. Section 5.3. is devoted to proportional determiners such as “more than two out of three”. Part six then considers the standard existential and universal quantifiers. Section 6.1 reformulates the standard Generalized Quantifier analysis in comparative terms, whereas Section 6.2 deals with exception determiners of the form “all but five”. (shrink)

This paper presents an argument based on evidence from experiments featuring Antecedent-Contained Deletion sentences situated in carefully-manipulated discourse contexts, that covert movement is not grammatically constrained by tense. ACD is a form of Verb Phrase Ellipsis in which ellipsis is embedded in its antecedent. Under an account appealing to Quantifier Raising, the quantificational phrase containing the ellipsis site raises to a VP-external position, allowing the VP to become the antecedent. When ACD is embedded in a non-finite clause, (...) such sentences are ambiguous, since multiple VPs can serve as an antecedent. However, when ACD is embedded in a finite clause, the range of interpretations has been claimed to be restricted, because of an independent ‘clause-bounded’ movement constraint on Quantifier Raising. However, there are exceptions to this generalization. I present evidence from an experimental investigation of finite-clause-embedded ACD sentences, relying on Cecchetto, to demonstrate that under the right discourse conditions, the supposedly unavailable Matrix reading surfaces robustly, at a percentage that is surprising if the constraint were rooted in the grammar. I argue that these results call into question the source of this locality restriction, and propose that it has nothing to do with an arbitrary grammatical constraint on movement. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Fragmentary utterances such as short answers and subsentential XPs without linguistic antecedents are proposed to have fully sentential syntactic structures, subject to ellipsis. Ellipsis in these cases is preceded by A-movement of the fragment to a clause-peripheral position; the combination of movement and ellipsis accounts for a wide range of connectivity and anti-connectivity effects in these structures. Fragment answers furthermore shed light on the nature of islands, and contrast with sluicing in triggering island effects; this is shown (...) to follow from an articulated syntax and the PF theory of islands. Fragments without linguistic antecedents are argued to be compatible with an ellipsis analysis, and do not support direct interpretation approaches to these phenomena. (shrink)

The paper investigates an elliptical construction, Clarification Ellipsis, that occurs in dialogue. We suggest that this provides data that demonstrates that updates resulting from utterances cannot be defined in purely semantic terms, contrary to the prevailing assumptions of existing approaches to dynamic semantics. We offer a computationally oriented analysis of the resolution of ellipsis in certain cases of dialogue clarification. We show that this goes beyond standard techniques used in anaphora and ellipsis resolution and requires operations on (...) highly structured, linguistically heterogeneous representations. We characterize these operations and the representations on which they operate. We offer an analysis couched in a version of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar combined with a theory of information states (IS) in dialogue. We sketch an algorithm for the process of utterance integration in IS which leads to grounding or clarification. The account proposed here has direct applications to the theory of attitude reports, an issue which is explored briefly in the concluding remarks of the paper. (shrink)

Categorial grammar is well-known for its elegant analysis of coordination enabled by the flexible notion of constituency it entertains. However, to date, no systematic study exists that examines whether this analysis has any obvious empirical advantage over alternative analyses of nonconstituent coordination available in phrase structure-based theories of syntax. This paper attempts precisely such a comparison. We compare the direct constituent coordination analysis of non-canonical coordinations in categorial grammar with an ellipsis-based analysis of the same phenomena in the recent (...) HPSG literature. We provide a set of empirical evidence, consisting of cases in which non-canonical coordinations interact with scopal operators of various sorts, which systematically falsifies the predictions of the latter, ‘linearization-based’ ellipsis approach to coordination. We propose an alternative analysis in a variant of categorial grammar called Hybrid Type-Logical Categorial Grammar. The proposed framework builds on both the Lambek-inspired variants of categorial grammar and a more recent line of work modelling word order via a lambda calculus for the prosodic component. The flexible syntax–semantics interface of this framework straightforwardly captures the interactions between non-canonical coordinations and scopal expressions, demonstrating the broader empirical payoff of the direct constituent coordination analysis of non-canonical coordinations pioneered by Steedman :523–568, 1985; Linguist Philos 13:207–263, 1990) and Dowty hitherto not explicitly recognized in the literature. (shrink)

We offer a computational analysis of the resolution of ellipsis in certain cases of dialogue clarification. We show that this goes beyond standard techniques used in anaphora and ellipsis resolution and requires operations on highly structured, linguistically heterogeneous representations. We characterize these operations and the representations on which they operate. We offer an analysis couched in a version of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar combined with a theory of information states (IS).

The aim of our paper is to present noun phrase ellipsis as a cohesive tie in the Macedonian language. We will start our paper briefly discussing a few definitions of the term ellipsis, emphasizing our understanding of this term, and more concretely its meaning when occurring in the NP. Namely, we define ellipsis as a complex phenomenon. In linguistics, it means the omitting of linguistic elements that need to be understood from the context, where the recipient should (...) adequately fill the grammatically allowable gap. Then we will refer to different kinds of ellipsis in Macedonian, starting with our main issue - ellipsis in the noun phrase. Elliptical NP is cohesive and usually refers anaphorically to another NP. But the main question is how much of the full noun phrase is involved in the elliptical NP in Macedonian. For that purpose, we will analyze examples to define which elements of the NP can be omitted and under which conditions. Examples of cataphoric ellipsis are also included. When there is an ellipsis of the center of the phrase, the other element of the NP functions as the center of the phrase. For more precision research, we will use examples of different functional styles in Macedonian. The examples will be given first in Macedonian, and then translated into English. Our conclusion will be presented through graphs. (shrink)

Beautiful passages are passages of ‘pure presence’ inasmuch as they cannot be separated from an absence, from an absence that cannot be revoked by restoring a ‘pure presence’. Beautiful passages are passages that move and inspire because they do not withhold anything, though their gift and their surrender lies in an ellipsis that is essential to ‘pure presence’ and that cannot be sidestepped, as if a remainder, a reserve, or a surplus inhered in them. It is impossible to get (...) a grip on beautiful passages. They are riddles that have been solved but persist in the midst of their solution and do not forfeit any of their enigmaticalness. Their beauty resides in an experience of intensity, in an experience based on an elision, on a tightening and an averting. Such averting is an immediate turning towards the one who feels the intensity, touching and stimulating him as a consequence. This paper explores the question: Are there beautiful passages in Of Grammatology? (shrink)

This paper addresses a phenomenon in which certain word-parts can be omitted. The evidence shows that the full range of data cannot be captured by a sublexical analysis, since the phenomena can be observed both in phrasal and in lexical environments. It is argued that a form of deletion is involved, and that the phenomena—lexical or otherwise—are subject to the same phonological, semantic, and syntactic constraints. In the formalization that is proposed, all of the above constraints are cast in a (...) parallel and declarative fashion, in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard and Sag Head-driven phrase structure grammar, 1994), since the various levels of linguistic description are locally and simultaneously available. Building on recent accounts of ellipsis, this paper proposes a unified and general account of word-part ellipsis and phrasal ellipsis. (shrink)

Using the LDSNL model of utterance interpretation being developed by Gabbay and Kempson , this paper demonstrates how the dynamics of the proof process adopted explains configurational restrictions imposed on the interpretation of elliptical fragments. The blurring of traditional semantic and syntactic dichotomies in the LDSNL proof-theoretic reconstruction of interpretation successfully provides a basis for predicting the array of variation displayed by different elliptical forms. The logic adopted is a composite system of a type logic nested within a database logic. (...) Two resource-sensitive sub-types of Conditional Introduction form the basis for explaining the ellipsis data. The result is a demonstration of how the simple device of adding labels to an inference system can provide a useful tool not only at the meta-logic level of comparing alternative logic and grammar formalisms, but also at the level of explaining natural language data. (shrink)

It is a near truism of philosophy of language that sentences are prior to words--that they are the only things that fundamentally have meaning. Robert's Stainton's study interrogates this idea, drawing on a wide body of evidence to argue that speakers can and do use mere words, not sentences, to communicate complex thoughts.

Our first aim in this paper is to respond to four novel objections in Jason Stanley's 'Context and Logical Form'. Taken together, those objections attempt to debunk our prior claims that one can perform a genuine speech act by using a subsentential expression—where by 'subsentential expression' we mean an ordinary word or phrase, not embedded in any larger syntactic structure. Our second aim is to make it plausible that, pace Stanley, there really are pragmatic determinants of the literal truthconditional content (...) of speech acts. We hope to achieve this second aim precisely by defending the genuineness of subsentential speech acts. Given our two aims, it is necessary to highlight briefly their connection—which we do in the first part of the Introduction. Following that, we introduce Stanley's novel objections. This is the role of the second part of the Introduction. We offer our rebuttals in Section 2 (against 'shorthand') and Section 3 (against syntactic ellipsis, among other things). (shrink)

Examines poetic language in the work of Heidegger, Hölderlin, and Blanchot.