Brussels Conference on Generative Linguistics (BCGL4) 9 November 2009 Ellipsis and Discourse Integration Daniel Hardt Computational Linguistics Copenhagen Business School Introduction Form and Meaning “Ellipsis continues to fascinate because its analysis goes directly to the heart of the main reason we study syntax: to discern the nature of the form/meaning correspondence.” (Merchant (2009)) • The syntactic system must interface with a general conceptual or semantic system • Goal: explain ellipsis phenomena in terms of these irreducible semantic interface requirements, rather than in terms of additional complexities in the syntactic system Discourse Integration One interface requirement: integrate sentences into a coherent discourse. Discourse Integration has these general features: • Given-New: determine what is given and what is new, when relating two structures. (E-given, Merchant (2001), Alternative Semantics, Rooth (1985)) • Maximize Structure: Maximize Commonality between related structures. (Maximize Common Theme, from Asher et al. (2001) • Least-Effort: Minimize Size of Discourse Integration. Main Claim • Ellipsis occurrences are variables – Variables participate in “structure sharing” – The shared structure can be freely re-interpreted – Variable interpretation is part of Discourse Integration The Plan 1. Discourse Integration vs LF Identity • Non-local Sloppy Identity • Sloppy Ellipsis • Split Antecedents 2. An Alternative View: Ellipsis as Definite Descriptions 3. More about Discourse Integration • Maximize Structure • Least-Effort 4. Conclusions 1