Abstract
This paper challenges the tradition of defining grammars and grammaticality independently of the context of utterance. Using dialogue phenomena, in particular elliptical utterances, it argues that the obvious dependence of such utterances on context to recover the intended interpretation should be regarded as an inherent characteristic of natural language grammars and thus applicable to the characterisation of grammaticality for all natural language strings. The paper adopts the framework of Dynamic Syntax which shifts the burden of syntactic explanation away from the definition of de-contextualised syntactic structures defined over strings of words towards the characterisation of syntax as a context-dependent, incremental process whereby interpretations of strings in context are progressively built up as an utterance proceeds. This change in the way syntax is conceived, together with a demonstration that the same processes for building interpretations are used in generation as in parsing, is shown to allow a unitary account of anaphora and a range of elliptical phenomena that is typically precluded in non-dynamic, structure-based theories of syntax. The paper ends by providing formal definitions of well-formedness with respect to context that preserve traditional notions of grammaticality while allowing more fine-grained characterisations of well-formedness to distinguish acceptability from full (un)grammaticality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Blackburn P., Meyer-Viol W. (1994). Linguistics, logic and finite trees. Bulletin of the IGPL 2, 3–31
Cann R., Kempson R., Marten L. (2005). The dynamics of language, No. 35 in Syntax and Semantics. Oxford, Elsevier
Cann R., Marten L., Otsuka M., Swinburne D. (2004). On the left and on the right. In: Adger D., De Cat C., Tsoulas G. (eds) Peripheries. Dordrecht, Kluwer, pp. 19–47
Chomsky N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht, Foris
Dalrymple M., Shieber S.M., Pereira F.C.N. (1991). Ellipsis and higher-order unification. Linguistics and Philosophy 14(4): 399–452
Fernando T. (2002). Three processes in natural language interpretation. In: Sieg W., Sommer R., Talcott C. (eds) Reflections on the foundations of mathematics: Essays in honor of Solomon Feferman. Natick, Mass, Association for Symbolic Logic, pp. 208–227
Fiengo R., May R. (1994). Indices and identity. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press
Ginzburg J., Cooper R. (2004). Clarification, ellipsis, and the nature of contextual updates in dialogue. Linguistics and Philosophy 27(3): 297–365
Ginzburg J., Gregory H., Lappin S. (2001). SHARDS: Fragment resolution in dialogue. In: Bunt H., van der Sluis I., Thijsse E. (eds) Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Computational Semantics (IWCS-4). Tilburg, Tilburg University, pp. 156–172
Hankamer J., Sag I. (1976). Deep and surface Anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 7, 391–428
Hardt D. (1999). Dynamic interpretation of verb phrase ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy 22, 187–221
Heim, I. (1982). The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases. Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Hornstein N. (1995). Logical form. Cambridge, MIT Press
Kamp H., Reyle U. (1993). From discourse to logic. Kluwer Academic Publishers
Kaplan R., Zaenen A. (1989). Long-distance dependencies, constituent structure, and functional uncertainty. In: Baltin M., Kroch A. (eds) Alternative conceptions of phrase structure. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 17–42
Keller F., Sorace A. (2005). Gradience in linguistic data. Lingua 115, 1397–1524
Kempson, R., Meyer-Viol, W., & Gabbay, D. (1999). VP ellipsis: toward a dynamic structural account. In S. Lappin, & E. Benmamoun (Eds.), Fragments: Studies in Ellipsis and Gapping (pp. 227–290). Oxford University Press.
Kempson, R., Meyer-Viol, W., & Gabbay, D. (2001). Dynamic syntax: The flow of language understanding. Blackwell.
Lappin S. (1996). The interpretation of ellipsis. In: S. Lappin (eds) The handbook of contemporary semantic theory. Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 145–176
Marcus M. (1987). Deterministic parsing and description theory. In: Whitelock P., Wood M., Somers H., Johnson R., Bennett P. (eds) Linguistic theory and computer applications. New York, Academic Press, pp. 69–112
Merchant J. (2001). The syntax of silence. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Otsuka, M., & Purver, M. (2003). Incremental generation by incremental parsing. In Proceedings of the 6th CLUK Colloquium (pp. 93–100). CLUK: Edinburgh.
Pickering M., Garrod S. (2004). Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27, 169–226
Piwek, P. (1998). Logic, information and conversation. Ph.D. thesis, Tilburg University.
Pulman S. (2000). Bidirectional contextual resolution. Computational Linguistics 26(4): 497–538
Purver, M., Cann, R., & Kempson, R. (2006). Grammars as parsers: Meeting the dialogue challenge. Research on Language and Computation (forthcoming).
Ranta, A. (1994). Type-theoretical grammar. Oxford University Press.
Reinhart, T. (1991). Elliptic conjunctions—Non-quantificational LF. In A. Kasher (Ed.), The Chomskian turn (pp. 360–84). Blackwell.
Schlangen, D. (2003). A coherence-based approach to the interpretation of non-sentential utterances in dialogue. Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh.
Stainton, R. (2004). The pragmatics of non-sentences. In L. Horn, & G. Ward (Eds.), The handbook of pragmatics (pp. 266–287). Blackwell.
Stainton R. (2006). Words and thoughts. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Stanley J. (2000). Context and logical form. Linguistics and Philosophy 23, 391–434
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
About this article
Cite this article
Cann, R., Kempson, R. & Purver, M. Context and Well-Formedness: The Dynamics of Ellipsis. Res on Lang and Comput 5, 333–358 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11168-007-9033-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11168-007-9033-3