Ellipsis resolution is governed by syntactic identity conditions (Sag 1976; Williams 1977), not semantic scope, so ellipsis parallelism cannot distinguish ambiguity from sense-generality.

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Reasons For

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Reason for

1.Ellipsis licensing depends on structural parallelism (c-command, constituency), not antecedent meaning, as VP-ellipsis examples demonstrate.
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2.Sense-general predicates (like 'give') allow multiple semantic readings, but ellipsis still requires matching syntactic configurations regardless.
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3.If semantics governed ellipsis, we'd expect systematic failures when antecedents are ambiguous; instead parallelism succeeds uniformly.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

1.Ellipsis resolution systematically fails when syntactic identity holds but semantic incompatibility exists (garden-path scope mismatches).
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2.Scope-dependent phenomena like binding, quantifier interactions, and donkey anaphora demonstrably constrain ellipsis licensing in ways syntax alone cannot explain.
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3.The claim conflates syntactic *licensing* conditions with semantic *resolution* mechanisms—these are distinct levels requiring independent accounts.
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Key Terms

Ambiguity(as used in linguistics and philosophy of language): When something can be understood or interpreted in more than one way.
Ellipsis(in linguistics and philosophy of language): In language, when you leave out words that are already understood from context—like saying 'I like pizza, but he doesn't' instead of 'I like pizza, but he doesn't like pizza.'
Ellipsis parallelism(in linguistics): The idea that repeated or left-out words in sentences follow parallel patterns in structure or meaning.
Sag, Ivan (1976)(in linguistics): A linguist who proposed that how words are left out of sentences is determined by grammar rules, not by meaning.
Semantic scope(in linguistics and philosophy of language): How the meaning of a word or phrase reaches across other parts of a sentence to affect what they mean.
Syntactic(as used in linguistics): Related to the rules and structure of how words are arranged in language, rather than their meaning.
Williams, Edwin (1977)(in linguistics): A linguist who independently developed theories about how grammar (not meaning) controls when words can be left out of sentences.
identity conditions(Metaphysics of mental states): The criteria that determine what makes an entity the same entity across time or contexts, i.e., what individuates it.
sense-generality(Section 5.3, analytic-synthetic distinction): A property of a term that applies across multiple cases under a single meaning, as distinguished from ambiguity where multiple distinct meanings are present

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Philosophy of Language1 linked

Ellipsis licensing depends on structural parallelism (c-command, constituency), ...Ellipsis resolution systematically fails when syntactic identity holds but seman...If semantics governed ellipsis, we'd expect systematic failures when antecedents...Scope-dependent phenomena like binding, quantifier interactions, and donkey anap...

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 2 (1 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit