It is generally assumed that ellipsis requires certain parallelism between the clause containing the ellips is and some antecedent clause. We argue that the parallelism requirement generated by ellipsis must be applied in accordance with discourse structure: a matching antecedent clause must be found that locally c-commands the clause containing the ellipsis in the discourse tree. We show that the claim makes several correct predictions concerning the interpretation of ellipsis, both in terms of the selection of the antecedent (in Sluicing and Verb Phrase Ellipsis), and in terms of the possible readings given a particular antecedent (in the "many-clause" puzzle and in Antecedent-Contained Deletion).

This paper develops a framework for TAG (Tree Adjoining Grammar) semantics that brings together ideas from different recent approaches. Then, within this framework, an analysis of scope is proposed that accounts for the different scopal properties of quantifiers, adverbs, raising verbs and attitude verbs. Finally, including situation variables in the semantics, different situation binding possibilities are derived for different types of quantificational elements. 1

Sluicing—the elliptical construction in which all of a constituent question goes missing except for the interrogative phrase—is commonly analyzed as involving movement of the interrogative phrase to Spec-CP followed by deletion of TP (Ross 1969, Merchant 2001). In this paper, I examine how well the movement plus deletion analysis extends to Farsi, a whin situ language that, surprisingly, has a sluicing construction nearly identical to its English counterpart. I argue that the interrogative phrase in Farsi sluicing escapes deletion not by whmovement as in English but by a type of focus movement. This operation, which normally applies very generally and is optional, is restricted in sluicing contexts in two ways: i) it is obligatory, and ii) it only applies to interrogative phrases. I propose a formal implementation that integrates these two properties into the licensing requirement on deletion, advancing the current understanding of the syntax of sluicing. 1