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Processing Elided Verb Phrases with Flawed Antecedents: the Recycling Hypothesis.
Ana Arregui1, Charles Clifton, Lyn Frazier
1University of Ottawa.
Journal of Memory and Language
|August 22, 2007
Summary
Syntactic and semantic theories struggle with verb phrase ellipsis. A processing theory combined with syntax explains acceptability, supporting a "VP recycling hypothesis" where listeners create antecedents when needed.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Traditional syntactic theories of verb phrase ellipsis (VP-ellipsis) often incorrectly label acceptable sentences as ungrammatical.
- Semantic theories, conversely, tend to overgenerate, accepting ungrammatical sentences.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose and test a processing theory combined with a syntactic account to better explain verb phrase ellipsis.
- To investigate the
- VP recycling hypothesis,
Main Methods:
- Five acceptability judgment experiments were conducted.
- Experiments varied the syntactic and semantic properties of antecedents for VP-ellipsis.
- Specific contrasts included perfect vs. impossible antecedents, and verbal vs. nominal gerund subjects.
Main Results:
- The proposed processing theory, alongside syntax, successfully described and explained data on verb phrase ellipsis.
- The
- VP recycling hypothesis
- was supported, indicating listeners/readers construct antecedents when a perfect syntactic match is unavailable.
- Experiment 5 showed a tendency to use less marked antecedents, even if not a perfect syntactic match.
Conclusions:
- A processing-based approach, integrating syntactic information, offers a more accurate account of verb phrase ellipsis.
- The
- VP recycling hypothesis
- provides a framework for understanding how language users handle ellipsis with non-ideal antecedents.
- Linguistic markedness influences the acceptability of ellipsis resolution.
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