Prose

Predicates and Formulas: Evidence from Ellipsis

This paper discusses a pattern of argument identity effects in antecedent-contained VP-deletion, first discussed in Kennedy 1994, that cannot be explained under standard assumptions about the interpretation of such constructions. In developing an account of these facts, I will make crucial use of a syntax and semantics for quantification in which the expression that introduces the restriction term of a quantifier denotes a predicate, but the one that introdues the scope term denotes an open proposition, and binders denote second-order properties of assignment functions (Sternefeld 1997, Sternefeld 2006, Kobele 2006, Kobele 2010). This approach differs from the standard syntax and semantics for quantification, in which both restriction and scope terms denote predicates, but it shares important features with the analysis of quantification and variable binding proposed by Irene Heim in her own (Heim 1997) account of the same pattern of data.