Verb Phrase Ellipsis: Form, Meaning, and Processing

The central claim of this dissertation is that an elliptical VP is a proform. This claim has two primary consequences: first, the elliptical VP can have no internal syntactic structure. Second, the interpretation of VP ellipsis must be governed by the same general conditions governing other proforms, such as pronouns. The basic condition governing the interpretation of a proform is that it must be semantically identified with its antecedent. A computational model is described in which this identification is mediated by store and retrieve operations defined with respect to a discourse model. Because VP ellipsis is treated on a par with other proforms, the ambiguity arising from “sloppy identity” becomes epiphenomenal, resulting from the fact that the store and retrieve operations are freely ordered. A primary argument for the proform theory of VP ellipsis concerns syntactic constraints on variables within the antecedent. I examine many different types of variables, including reflexives, reciprocals, negative polarity items, and wh-traces. In all these cases, syntactic constraints are not respected under ellipsis. This indicates that the relation governing VP ellipsis is semantic rather than syntactic. In further support of the proform theory, I show that there is a striking similarity in the antecedence possibilities for VP ellipsis and those for pronouns. Two computer programs demonstrate the claims of this dissertation. One program implements the semantic copying required to resolve VP ellipsis, demonstrating the correct set of possible readings for the examples of interest. The second program selects the antecedent for a VP ellipsis occurrence. This program has been tested on several hundred examples of VP ellipsis, automatically collected from corpora

Ellipsis and Discourse (Dissertation Proposal)

In human discourse there is much that is communicated without being explicitly stated. The grammar of natural language provides a broad array of mechanisms for such implicit communication. One example of this is verb phrase ellipsis, in which a verb phrase is elided, its position marked only by an auxiliary verb. Such elliptical constructions are generally easily and unambiguously understood. In this proposal I will attempt to explain how this is accomplished

Presupposition as anaphora in the Verbmobil semantic formalism

In this report we discuss the treatment of presuppositional expressions in the Verbmobil Semantic Formalism (Bos et al., 1994). First a classification of relevant presupposition triggers is given. Then the representation of presuppositions in the Semantic Formalism, which is an extended, compositional version of Discourse Representation Theory, is defined. Finally a procedure for presupposition projection, akin to Van der Sandt's theory (Van der Sandt, 1992), is proposed, illustrated, and discussed.Dieser Bericht beschäftigt sich mit der Behandlung von Präsuppositionen im Verbmobil Semantikformalismus. Zuerst werden die relevanten Präsuppositionsauslöser klassifiziert. Dann wird die Repräsentation vor Präsuppositionen im Semantikformalismus, der eine erweiterte, kompositionelle Version der Diskurs-Repräsentation-Theorie ist, definiert. Abschliessend wird eine Methode zur Präsuppositionsprojektion, ähnlich der Theorie von Van der Sandt, vorgeschlagen, illustriert und diskutiert