UCLA

This thesis engages with the issue of identity in ellipsis by adding verb phrase ellipsis with symmetrical predicates to the literature on ellipsis mismatches. Symmetrical predicates support participant and transitivity switching verb phrase ellipsis, where syntactic identity between the antecedent and elided verb phrases is lacking. This kind of ellipsis is accounted for under a semantic identity condition, where the antecedent verb phrase must entail the elided one (cf. Fox 2000), though not necessarily vice versa (cf. Merchant 2001). Intensionality plays a crucial role in circumventing redundancy or contradiction, whose incompatibility with ellipsis falls under extensions to L(ogical)-triviality (Gajewski 2009).