Introduction

Ellipsis is one of a very few constructions in natural language that is non-resource sensitive.

It seems to involve massive reuse of the meanings of linguistic material. As such, it does not ‘come for free’ in any linguistic theory, most of which are built around the assumption that natural language is in fact resource sensitive.

• for next time, have read Daniel Hardt’s 1993 dissertation (chapter 2)! This chapter catalogues a number of ‘mismatches’ between ellipsis site and antecedent.