Ellipsis and discourse-linking

This paper provides an account of the distribution of the forms of ellipsis called Sluicing, NP-ellipsis and VP-ellipsis. It argues that (i) ellipsis is a pro-form, (ii) the pro-form is within an H-max, H a functional head, b y LF, (iii) this functional head has the property of being Discourse-linkin g, which licenses the empty category in the syntax. Most of the data base i s taken from English, but the analyses include VP-ellipsis phenomena in Ita lian and NP-ellipsis in Spanish which have not been discussed within the ge nerative tradition until now. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights res erved.