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<Paper uid="C92-1048">
  <Title>VP Ellipsis and Contextual Interpretation</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="abstr">
    <SectionTitle>
1 Introduction
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Tim problem of verb phrase ellipsis can be divided into two sub-problems: Problem (1): how is an antecedent selected? Problem (2): given a particular antecedent, how is it to be reconstructed at the ellipsis site? Most work on VP ellipsis has dealt with Problem (2), concerning the copying or reconstruction of a particular antecedent. A wide variety of approaches to this problem have been proposed, including snrface structure accounts (\[141, \[18\]), &amp;quot;syntactic&amp;quot; LF (\[5\]), and semantic (\[251, \[28\], \[15\], \[21\], \[4\], \[23\], \[24\]). However, I will argue that there is a natural level of representation that has not been pursued, which I will call the &amp;quot;properly semantic&amp;quot; level. I will show that this alternative has significant empirical advantages over other approaches to Problem (2). In addition, the approach suggests some possible ways of addressing Problem (1), which concerns selecting among alternative potential antecedents. This problem has been largely ignored.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> There Is a variety of evidence that indicates that VP ellipsis is resolved at a semantic rather than syntactic level of representation. This evidence includes the (1) a. I told John/ that I didn't expect him i to fail hisl exam.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> b. I told Bill/ that I did. \[expect him/ to fail hisj exam\] Similarly, most existing accounts 2 do not permit a pronoun to be bound by different binders in antecedent and target, as in: (2) Every boyi in Bill's class hoped Mary would ask himl out, but a boyj in John's class actually knew that she would. \[ask himj out\] It is interesting to note that none of the existing semantic accounts qualify as &amp;quot;properly semantic&amp;quot; accordlug to some fairly standard criteria. The modifications required to comply with these criteria, I will argue, are exactly the ones needed to solve these empirical problems. The criteria I have in mind are tile following two general requirements for semantic representation, imposed in Montague's\[20\] &amp;quot;Universal Grammar&amp;quot;: Condition (1): Tile logical form language must be &amp;quot;dispensable&amp;quot;.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> I ha exeanplea of VP ellipaln, the a.ntecedent in in bold, and the target, or reconstructed material, is bracketed.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> 2A po~ible exception is the account of Prfist et a1(\[23\], \[24\]). I di$ctms problenm with this account in section 4.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> ACRES DE COLING-92, NANTES, 23-28 Ao~'r 1992 3 0 3 PROC. OV COLING-92, NANTES, AUO. 23-28, 1992 Condition (2): Semantic representations must have contextual parameters.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> None of the existing semantic accounts satisfies both of these requirements. As Partee and Bach\[21\] argue, the Sag/Williams account does not satisfy Condition (1), because it imposes an &amp;quot;alphabetic variance&amp;quot; condition, making essential reference to the syntax of logical form expressions. This condition is also imposed in Partee and Bach's account, and a similar condition arises in a very different setting in the account of Dalrymple, Shieber and Pereira\[4\]. s Only Lappin's account \[17\] explicitly removes the alphabetic variance condition, bringing this account in accord with Condition (1). However, semantic representations do not have contextual parameters in Lappin's account, or in any of the other accounts.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> Thus, although there is a persistent intuition that VP ellipsis requires a semantic treatment, no existing account is &amp;quot;properly semantic&amp;quot; in the sense required by conditions (1) and (2). In this paper I will describe such an account, in which the semantic representation ofa VP is a three-tuple &lt; DM~,P,DMo,t :&gt;, consisting of a property P and input and output discourse models.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> A key feature of this approach is that the antecedent is reconstructed at the ellipsis site as a semantic object which includes contextual dependencies. These contextual dependencies can be resolved independently in the antecedent and the target. This is required for examples such as (1) and (2).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> No reference to the syntax of logical form expressions is made in this approach, satisfying Condition (1). The representation of VP's as relations involving input and output discourse contexts satisfies Condition (2). So this account is more &amp;quot;properly semantic&amp;quot; than alternative semantic accounts, whose theoretical status is somewhat less clear. One consequence of this theoretical clarity is the ease with which the approach can be computationally implemented.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> I will describe an implementation of this approach in terms of some simple extensions to the Incremental Interpretation System\[22\]. The fact that this system incorporates contextual dependencies, as required by Condition (2), makes it very simple to implement the approach. Indeed in an important sense there are no additional mechanisms required for VP ellipsis, over and above those independently required for pronominal and other forms of anaphora.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> I begin with a brief overview of the Incremental Interpretation System. I then describe my extensions to aThe account of Klein \[15\], while couched in the DI~F formalhum, C/uentlally duplicates the Sag/Willian~ approach, defining verlinn~ of the Derived VP rule and the Pronoun Rule in DITr terms. Sells \[2ill also suggests storing properties in a DRT-style dlacour~ model, although he does not apply thls to VP elllpais. this system which implement the type of approach to VP ellipsis I am advocating, and I describe the derivation of an example that cannot be accommodated by alternative accounts. Finally, 1 point out that the current approach suggests some promising avenues for progress on the neglected question concerning the selection of an antecedent VP.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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