Abstract In this paper I use the formal framework of minimalist grammars to implement a version of the traditional approach to ellipsis as 'deletion under syntactic (derivational) identity', which, in conjunction with canonical analyses of voice phenomena, immediately allows for voice mismatches in verb phrase ellipsis, but not in sluicing. This approach to ellipsis is naturally implemented in a parser by means of threading a state encoding a set of possible antecedent derivation contexts through the derivation tree. Similarities between ellipsis and pronominal resolution are easily stated in these terms. In the context of this implementation, two approaches to ellipsis in the transformational community are naturally seen as equivalent descriptions at different levels: the LF-copying approach to ellipsis resolution is best seen as a description of the parser, whereas the phonological deletion approach a description of the underlying relation between form and meaning.

This paper reexamines the Ross (1967) claim that while interrogative (+Q) CPs are islands for whextraction, as shown in 1a and 1b, declarative (-Q) CPs are not, as shown in 2a and 2b. Alexopoulou and Keller (2007) report that English-speaking subjects find extractions in the Island condition to have degraded acceptability as compared to the Non-island condition, in non-embedded and embedded

Over the years, a number of counter-examples to the hypothesis that ellipsis resolution is mediated via syntactic identity have been identified. However, in the same time evidence which seems to re-quire comparison of syntactic structures in ellipsis resolution has also been unearthed. On top of this empirical puzzle, survive minimal-ism places an additional theoretical constraint: syntactic structures, once assembled, are opaque to further search or manipulation. In this paper, I show that a simple perspective shift allows us both to view the purported counter-examples as providing glimpses into the nature of the operations which build syntactic structure, and to satisfy the theoretical constraints imposed by survive minimalism’s derivational take on syntactic structure. 1 Syntactic identity in ellipsis One of the basic tasks of a theory of ellipsis is to explain what elliptical sen-tences can mean.1 An observation so obvious it hardly bears mentioning is that the interpretation of an ellipsis site is not free, but rather is constrained in various ways by aspects of its surrounding context. As an example, in an empty discourse context, sentence 1 has only one meaning, which is syn-onymous with 2, and sentence 3 means only what 4 does, although only the matrix verb differs between the two. (1) Jesús praised every girl that Adam did. ∗My thanks to Hans-Martin Gärtner, Mike Putnam, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply. 1A complete theory of ellipsis must account not only for how utterances of elliptical sentences are interpreted, but also for the distribution of ellipsis sites in discourse. It seems fruitful to approach the study of ellipsis by pursuing these two tasks independently. I will here largely ignore the task of specifying when ellipsis is licensed (though see Hardt

Abstract. Minimalist analyses typically treat quantifier scope inter-actions as being due to movement, thereby bringing constraints there-upon into the purview of the grammar. Here we adapt De Groote’s continuation-based presentation of dynamic semantics to minimalist gram-mars. This allows for a simple and simply typed compositional interpre-tation scheme for minimalism. 1