Local licensers and recovering in VP ellipsis

Abstract

The core properties of VP ellipsis in English and Portuguese may be captured assuming that the elliptical constituent is licensed under local c-command by a verbal element in a sentence functional head. However, the lack of VP ellipsis in most Romance languages and in German, despite the existence of verb movement to sentence functional projections in these languages, suggests that a parameter is involved. Empirical evidence indicates that this parametric variation should not be attributed to a specific functional head because the functional head occupied by the verbal licenser may vary across languages and language varieties. So we will claim that the existence vs. absence of VP ellipsis in the languages considered in this study is due to the features of the functional head that intervenes between the verbal licenser and the elliptical vP phase.