Verb Phrase Ellipsis with nominal antecedents: the case of polar nouns

This paper brings new theoretical and experimental evidence to bear on the classical question of whether Verb Phrase Ellipsis requires a syntactically identical antecedent and how it differs, in this respect, from the Verb Phrase Anaphor do it. We focus on the case of VPE with nominal antecedents and argue that it is always grammatical. Its acceptability is variable and is predicted by a discourse condition on VPE, namely that VPE prefers a salient alternative in the discourse context and that the elliptical clause must select one branch of the alternative (Miller and Pullum 2014). We argue that nominal antecedents are only acceptable in those special cases where a noun can express such an alternative. Specifically we focus on the case of ‘polar nouns’, which can function as a type of polar concealed question, making a polar alternative salient. We provide experimental evidence, based on online acceptability judgments, showing (i) that VPE is judged more acceptable than do it when the discourse condition is met, regardless of whether the alternative is expressed by a verb or a noun; (ii) that nominal antecedents are judged slightly less acceptable than verbal antecedents in such cases. In conclusion, we argue that VPE simply requires accessing an antecedent satisfying the discourse constraints within the context but that the heuristic strategies of the parser make use of all available evidence, including syntactic structure in short term memory, making syntactically identical antecedents easier to process and hence slightly more acceptable.