Acceptability, predictability and processing of antecedent-target mismatches under verb phrase ellipsis

Deletion-based accounts of verb phrase ellipsis (VPE) predict that this construction requires a syntactically identical antecedent, but previous research shows that some antecedent-target mismatches are perceived as relatively acceptable in experiments (see e.g. Arregui et al., 2006; Miller & Hemforth, 2014). So far, the acceptability of these mismatches has been explained mostly by licensing conditions on VPE or by ellipsis-specific processing mechanisms. This article explores to what extent the acceptability of mismatches follows from the more general principles of an information-theoretic account of language use, which has been independently evidenced for other omission phenomena: To avoid under- or overutilizing the hearer’s processing resources, predictable VPs are more likely to be omitted, whereas unpredictable ones are more likely to be realized. This hypothesis is tested with three experiments that investigate a gradual acceptability cline between VPE mismatches which has been reported by Arregui et al. (2006). First, an acceptability rating study replicates the overall pattern found by Arregui et al. (2006) and confirms that the effect is specific to ellipsis. Second, a production task shows that the acceptability differences are indeed related to a gradual decrease in the predictability of the target VP, which is also reflected in the likelihood of participants producing VPE. Finally, a self-paced reading experiment shows that VPE is more acceptable when it is easier to process. Overall, the experimental results support the information-theoretic account and suggest that no specific syntactic constraints or reconstruction mechanisms might be required to account for the acceptability cline observed for the mismatches investigated.