A discourse account of argument containment effects
Kennedy (1994) has observed that ellipsis in argument containment configurations gives rise to a
constraint that requires identity of parallel arguments. Both Kennedy and Heim (1997) have proposed accounts of
these argument containment effects; we show that similar effects arise in a variety of configurations that do not
involve argument containment. We present an analysis in terms of SDRT representations, in which VPE and antecedent
must participate in a felicitous relation. We claim that the occurrence of pitch accents constrains the
application of discourse relations, following Steedman (97). From this perspective, Kennedy's observations emerge
as straightforward consequences of basic constraints on discourse relations, familiar from SDRT and many other
theories.
Daniel Hardt and Nicholas Asher