Arregui Ana, Clifton Charles, Frazier Lyn, Moulton Keir
University of Ottawa.
J Mem Lang. 2006 Aug;55(2):232-246. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2006.02.005.
Traditional syntactic accounts of verb phrase ellipsis (e.g. "Jason laughed. Sam did [ ] too.") categorize as ungrammatical many sentences that language users find acceptable (they "undergenerate"); semantic accounts overgenerate. We propose that a processing theory, together with a syntactic account, does a better job of describing and explaining the data on verb phrase-ellipsis. Five acceptability judgment experiments supported a "VP recycling hypothesis," which claims that when a syntactically-matching antecedent is not available, the listener/reader creates one using the materials at hand. Experiments 1 and 2 used verb phrase ellipsis sentences with antecedents ranging from perfect (a verb phrase in matrix verb phrase position) to impossible (a verb phrase containing only a deverbal word). Experiments 3 and 4 contrasted antecedents in verbal versus nominal gerund subjects. Experiment 5 explored the possibility that speakers are particularly likely to go beyond the grammar and produce elided constituents without perfect matching antecedents when the antecedent needed is less marked than the antecedent actually produced. This experiment contrasted active (unmarked) and passive antecedents to show that readers seem to honor such a tendency.
传统的动词短语省略句法解释（例如，“杰森笑了。山姆也[笑了]。”）将许多语言使用者认为可接受的句子归类为不符合语法规则（它们“生成不足”）；语义解释则生成过度。我们提出，一种处理理论与一种句法解释相结合，能更好地描述和解释动词短语省略的数据。五个可接受性判断实验支持了“动词短语循环假说”，该假说认为，当没有句法匹配的先行词时，听者/读者会利用手头的材料创造一个。实验1和2使用了带有先行词的动词短语省略句，先行词的匹配程度从完美（主句动词短语位置的动词短语）到不可能（仅包含一个由动词派生而来的词的动词短语）。实验3和4对比了动词性动名词主语和名词性动名词主语中的先行词。实验5探讨了这样一种可能性，即当所需的先行词比实际产生的先行词标记性更小时，说话者特别有可能超越语法规则，生成没有完美匹配先行词的省略成分。该实验对比了主动（无标记）先行词和被动先行词，以表明读者似乎认可这种倾向。
