Ellipsis phenomena

The chapter presents the understanding about the portion of innate human language faculty that permits to understand the patterns of anaphoric possibilities permitted by linguistic forms and sentences that contain them. Although semantic issues intrude constantly, the primary focus of this chapter is on the consequences of the pattern of anaphora for syntactic theory. An anaphoric relation is typically said to hold whenever the semantic value of a linguistic form is related to the value of some previous or anticipated mention. The chapter lays out some boundary conditions for the syntax/semantics interface that anaphora questions inevitably invoke. The chapter explores Chomsky's Binding Theory. The richness of anaphoric morphology and its consequences for the syntax of anaphora are also discussed. Any plausible theory of anaphora must distinguish relations of dependent identity, pronouns bound as variables, and obviation. Competition-based theories of anaphora take the complementarities in the distributions of pronouns and anaphors.