English VP ellipsis: ellipsis site, licensing condition and identity condition. A literature review
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Date
2023-04-17Author
Macazaga Núñez, Irene
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Verb Phrase ellipsis is the syntactic occurrence in which the elements within the verb
phrase–the verb and its complements–are elided (van Craenenbroeck, 2014). Although
this linguistic phenomenon can be encountered in various natural languages (Hedberg,
2015), the challenging questions it poses have located English Verb Phrase ellipsis in
the spot of several researchers in the field of theoretical linguistics (Merchant, 2012).
From the beginning of Generative Grammar in the late 1950s, ellipsis has been widely
researched, with specific interest in Verb Phrase ellipsis and Sluicing (Merchant, 2012).
Most work on Verb Phrase ellipsis has endeavoured to provide answers to questions
related to the elided information, the context, and the relationship with the antecedent
(Merchant, 2012). Nonetheless, the majority of studies have presented proposals that
differ from one another, yielding the aforementioned questions open for debate.
Consequently, it is the aim of the present dissertation to analyse a wide range of studies
regarding this phenomenon in an attempt to review the literature on English Verb
Phrase ellipsis. To be more specific, this paper explores the three principal queries on
the topic: (i) the ellipsis site, (ii) the licensing condition, and (iii) the identity condition.
Firstly, the nature and the structure of the ellipsis site will be examined following the
VP proform approach (Rooth, 1981; Klein, 1987; Hardt, 1993; Hardt, 1999) and the PF-
deletion approach (Sato, 2013; van Craenenbroeck, 2014; Aelbrecht & Harwood, 2015).
Secondly, the licensing condition will be described in terms of an overt realisation of
the inflectional node (Sag, 1976; van Craenenbroeck, 2014) or the presence of the [E]
feature in the licensing head (Merchant, 2005; Merchant, 2012; Hedberg, 2015).
Thirdly, the identity relationship between the antecedent and the ellipsis site will be
explained via a syntactic approach (Ross, 1969; Sag, 1976; Hankamer & Sag, 1976;
Hankamer, 1979; Lasnik, 1995; Sato, 2013; Murphy, 2018), a semantic approach
(Hardt, 1993; Fiengo & May, 1994; Hardt, 1999; Hedberg, 2015) and a hybrid approach
(Chung, 2006; van Craenenbroeck, 2008; Merchant, 2013). In short, the existence of
diverse approaches supported by empirical data hinders the prevalence of one approach
over the rest.