How to understand silence: Voice mismatches in ellipsis in English

Abstract

Structure generation accounts of ellipsis propose that silent syntactic structure is generated but unpronounced in ellipsis. Reactivation accounts propose instead that the antecedent is reactivated at the ellipsis site, with no silent structure. Existing psycholinguistic findings have not distinguished these hypotheses (Phillips & Parker, 2014). We address this issue by investigating voice mismatches in VP ellipsis in English (e.g., A new language was supposed to be taught in the fall semester, but no professors could __ because the schedule was too tight). In Experiment 1, participants' performance at recognizing that a word did not appear in the sentence is poorer when a related word appeared (e.g., teach, when taught appeared), versus an unrelated word (e.g., worst). This effect is greater when the elided clause is in the active voice, as in the previous example, versus the passive (...but no new language was...). The contrast between active and passive conditions cannot be accounted for solely in terms of antecedent reactivation, since the antecedents are identical. Experiment 2, which compares sentences with VP ellipsis with sentences containing an overt pro-form (e.g., do that...), provides further evidence in support of this conclusion. The processing of VP ellipsis must include more than just antecedent reactivation. The findings of these two experiments are thus most consistent with the structure generation account of ellipsis.