Ellipsis resolution and inference
Daniel Hardt · Acta Linguistica Hafniensia · 2004
Y Since Webber (1978) it has been known that ellipsis interpretation sometimes requires inference. However, the literature on ellipsis has largely Ignored this: prominent accounts such as (Sag (1976); Williams (1977); Dalrymple et al. (1991); Fiengo and May (1994) and Hardt (1999)) provide no mechanism for inference in ellipsis resolution. The proposal in Rooth (1992) is an exception to this: Rooth gives several examples in which inference is required in ellipsis interpretation. He argues that ellipsis is subject to two different kinds of licensing conditions: an ellipsis-specific identity condition and a general focus-background condition. Rooth argues that the focus-background condition interacts with inference, while the ellipsis-specific identity condition does not. Rooth does not propose any constraints on inference. This presents an evident problem of overgeneration, since it is possible to come up with some chain of inferences to license virtually any interpretation of an elliptical expression.