Verb phrase ellipsis

In linguistics, 'Verb phrase ellipsis' (VP ellipsis or VPE) is a type of grammatical omission where a verb phrase is left out (elided) but its meaning can still be inferred from context. For example, "She will sell sea shells, and he will _{<sell sea shells>} too" is understood as "She will sell sea shells, and he will sell sea shells too" (tree structure illustrated to the right). VP ellipsis is well-studied, particularly in English, where auxiliary verbs (e.g., will, can, do) play a crucial role in recovering the omitted verb phrase. The reliance on auxiliary verbs gives English a distinctive mechanism for VP ellipsis, making it one of the most researched languages in this area. VP ellipsis can occur partially (e.g. argument ellipsis) or as a whole verb phrase. For instance, Japanese employs a phenomenon known as verb-stranding VP ellipsis, where the verb remains while the rest of the phrase is elided. This cross-linguistic perspective reveals that VP ellipsis is not unique to English, but varies in its structural realization across languages.