Bengali Verb-stranding VP Ellipsis and Ellipsis Identity Conditions

Abstract

This paper first presents additional evidence, on top of those in Simpson, Choudhury, and Menon (2013), for Verb-stranding VP Ellipsis (VVPE) in Bengali. It then demonstrates that the language violates the Verbal Identity Requirement (VIR) of Goldberg (2005), and then goes on to argue that the violation of the VIR is what should be expected, while the adherence of a language to it is what shouldn’t be. The paper concludes itself by suggesting that the VIR might very well be an artifact of more underlying interactions between syntax and phonology.