Verb Phrase Ellipsis in Persian: The Structural Question

This paper presents an investigation of the structure of Persian clauses which display verb phrase ellipsis. To this end, verb phrase ellipsis in Persian will be discussed in the light of the two theoretically significant approaches to ellipsis, namely, structural versus non-structural. Drawing on data from Persian and running the independently devised syntactic tests, we will argue that the ordinary syntactic structure exists in the ellipsis site; however, this structure will not be associated with a phonological make-up in the PF. The conclusion to be drawn is that the structural approach to ellipsis is superior to the rival approach in providing a more satisfactory account of the data.