Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Ellipsis---Toward the establishment of generative grammar as an empirical science---

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The main objective of the project has been to uncover the nature of the language faculty through syntactic and semantic analysis of elliptical constructions in natural language, mainly focusing on Japanese and English. Our ultimate goal is to propose a model of that part of language faculty which is conditioned by purely structural factors as distinct from those that are lexically or pragmatically conditioned.Ellipsis sheds some light on this aspect of the research. Since, by definition, more than what is pronounced is delivered in elliptical constructions, it is expected that the meaning of the 'omitted' part should be somehow reconstructed in our mind. What is important in this context is that while some elliptical constructions allow their meaning to be guessed based on the speaker's knowledge of the world, some require reconstruction of grammatical/linguistic representation, as pointed out in Hankamer & Sag (1976 : "Deep and Surface Anaphora," in Linguistic Inquiry). Hankamer & Sag … More show that certain elliptical constructions need an antecedent linguistic expression while others do not, and claim that the former is surface anaphora (whose interpretation needs to be calculated based on the reconstructed linguistic representation) and the latter is deep anaphora (whose meaning can be inferred in whatever way, based on extra-linguistic knowledge). In other words, surface anaphora reflects the structural/formal meaning of the antecedent expression, and this is the reason why we are especially interested in them : an ellipsis may give us more information than its overt counterpart, regarding the workings of grammar.In order to achieve the goal, we need (I) to identify the construction involving surface anaphora, (ii) to check the predictions which our theories make, and (iii) to revise our hypotheses where necessary. This requires varieties of preliminary investigation and pilot surveys. We recruited specialists of ellipsis in the fields of generative syntax and formal semantics. We were fortunate to have been able to form an ideal research group for fulfilling this goal. Less