Discourse parallelism, ellipsis, and ambiguity

Abstract

In this paper we combine a simple recovery mechanism for ellipsis with a general, discourse account of parallelism to account for a variety of phenomena concerning ellipsis, including Sag’s wide scope puzzle and complex examples concerning sloppy identity. Our recovery mechanism requires an identity of logical structure between the recovered material and antecedent in the ellipsis. The recovered material and the antecedent are then interpreted independently in their respective contexts, subject only to the general discourse constraints on parallelism. These constraints give a uniform account of parallelism facts, whether or not there is ellipsis. © 2001 Oxford University Press.