Verb Phrase Ellipsis in Persian: The Questions of Identity and Licensing

This paper presents an attempt to analyze the verb phrase ellipsis in Persian in terms of the questions of identity and licensing. Assuming a minimalist framework for the analysis, it is argued that verb phrase ellipsis in Persian is structurally licensed by a governing head which takes vP as its complement, through an algorithm of E(llipsis)-feature deletion at PF. It is also shown that structural identity of the elided constituent and its antecedent is crucial for the derivation of verb phrase ellipsis in Persian.