ABSTRACT
The main goal of this chapter is to propose a derivational account of the salient syntactic properties of VP ellipsis constructions, both in languages like English and in the languages that Goldberg (2005) dubs “V-stranding VPE languages.” The analysis offers evidence for the claim that derivations proceed by phases; cf. Chomsky (2000, 2001). Phases turn out to be relevant to the characterization of the heads that license VP ellipsis—only phase heads have the required property. They also shed light on the asymmetry between the languages that display VP ellipsis and those that do not. It appears that in the former, the [tense] feature on the phase head v is valued phase-internally, at the v level, whereas in the latter, it is not. Another important claim embodied in the analysis is that the morpho-syntactic properties of verbal forms across languages must be part of the account of VP ellipsis. These properties, in particular the interpretable and recoverable status of the features making up inflection turn out to be relevant, not to the definition of the Identity Condition on VP ellipsis, as Lasnik (1995a) claims, but to the proper characterization of the licenser.
