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# Generation of VP Ellipsis: A Corpus-Based Approach

**Authors:** [Daniel Hardt](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/daniel-hardt/), [Owen Rambow](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/owen-rambow/) · **Year:** 2001 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics **Link:** [aclanthology.org/P01-1038](https://aclanthology.org/P01-1038/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) — summary only

[**10** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2139912122) openalex · 2026-10-18[**2** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/aclbulk-2001-hardt-generation-vp-ellipsis-corpus-based/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/P01-1/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/P01-1038/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/P01-1038.pdf)
- [DOI 10.3115/1073012.1073050](https://doi.org/10.3115/1073012.1073050)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2139912122)

**Authors (2)**

1. [Daniel Hardt](https://openalex.org/A5054824570) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6041-1475) · h 19 · 1785 citations · 101 works
2. [Owen Rambow](https://openalex.org/A5021314411) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2054-039X) · h 46 · 9290 citations · 420 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The paper asks when a generator should elide a verb phrase and leave an auxiliary in its place, as in "in 1987, only 9% did". The corpus is taken from Sections 5 and 6 of the Wall Street Journal part of the Penn Treebank: 126 examples in all, 111 negative cases where two identical verb phrases were not elided, and 15 positive cases. The authors code distance in words and sentences, the syntactic relation, voice, adjuncts, quotes and discourse structure. Distance and syntactic relation correlate with ellipsis, the length of the antecedent does not. A rule learner (Ripper) gives the lowest error when it runs after the realizer on surface features: a mean error rate of 7.5% in ten-fold cross-validation, against 11.9% for never eliding.

## Ideas

- I1. `en/src/lin.rs`: after word order is fixed, add a rule that marks a verb pair for ellipsis only under the conditions the paper learns: same sentence, comparative construction, or at most 14 words apart with an antecedent of at least 3 words. Measure precision and recall on identical verb pairs from EWT, on the two-fold check (`en folds`).
- I2. Build a VPE set from EWT, which is CC BY-SA and may be used for training. Screen pairs of identical verbs with fewer than 10 intervening verbs, as the paper does, and label them by hand or with `annot`, checking a sample by hand. Report how many pairs are elided.
- I3. Stage test: run the elision decision at three points (on semantic features only, after parsing, after linearization) and compare error rates in `en lin-eval`. The paper finds the error falls from 11.7% to 9.2% to 7.5% as the stage moves later.
- I4. Use the 126 Penn Treebank examples as a test set only, never as training data for Mova.

## For Mova

The chapter is [29. Ellipsis, word order and information structure](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/29-ellipsis-word-order-information-structure/), and the code is `en/src/lin.rs` with the document context in `en/src/ctx.rs` for the antecedent distance. Measure first how often identical verb pairs within 10 verbs are elided in EWT. The paper's data is WSJ text from the LDC-licensed Penn Treebank, so it is test only in any measurement. Its 126 examples are a small set, and its error rate is cross-validated, not held out.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.3115/1073012.1073050](https://doi.org/10.3115/1073012.1073050)

```
@inproceedings{hardt2001generation,
  title = {{Generation of VP Ellipsis: A Corpus-Based Approach}},
  author = {Hardt, Daniel and Rambow, Owen},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics},
  year = {2001},
  doi = {10.3115/1073012.1073050},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3115/1073012.1073050}
}
```

- [← previous Corpus Variation and Parser Performance](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/aclbulk-2001-gildea-corpus-variation-parser-performance/)
- [next → Classifying the Semantic Relations in Noun Compounds via a Domain-Specific Lexical Hierarchy](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/aclbulk-2001-rosario-classifying-semantic-relations-noun-compounds/)
- [↑ back to English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/en/)

## References

10 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Jean Carletta. 1996. Assessing agreement on classification tasks: The kappa statistic. Computational Linguistics, 22(2):249–254. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Jean+Carletta%2E+1996%2E+Assessing+agreement+on+classification+tasks%3A+The+kappa+statistic%2E+Computational+Linguistics%2C+22%282%29%3A249%E2%80%93254%2E)
2. William Cohen. 1996. Learning trees and rules with set-valued features. In Fourteenth Conference of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence. AAAI. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=William+Cohen%2E+1996%2E+Learning+trees+and+rules+with+set%2Dvalued+features%2E+In+Fourteenth+Conference+of+the+American+Association+of+Artificial+Intelligence%2E+AAAI%2E)
3. Mary Dalrymple, Stuart Shieber, and Fernando Pereira. 1991. Ellipsis and higher-order unification. Linguistics and Philosophy, 14(4), August. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Mary+Dalrymple%2C+Stuart+Shieber%2C+and+Fernando+Pereira%2E+1991%2E+Ellipsis+and+higher%2Dorder+unification%2E+Linguistics+and+Philosophy%2C+14%284%29%2C+August%2E)
4. Robert Fiengo and Robert May. 1994. Indices and Identity. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Robert+Fiengo+and+Robert+May%2E+1994%2E+Indices+and+Identity%2E+MIT+Press%2C+Cambridge%2C+MA%2E)
5. Daniel Hardt. 1997. An empirical approach to vp ellipsis. Computational Linguistics, 23(4):525–541. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Daniel+Hardt%2E+1997%2E+An+empirical+approach+to+vp+ellipsis%2E+Computational+Linguistics%2C+23%284%29%3A525%E2%80%93541%2E) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cl-1997-hardt-empirical-approach-vp-ellipsis/)
6. Daniel Hardt. 1999. Dynamic interpretation of verb phrase ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy, 22(2):187–221. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Daniel+Hardt%2E+1999%2E+Dynamic+interpretation+of+verb+phrase+ellipsis%2E+Linguistics+and+Philosophy%2C+22%282%29%3A187%E2%80%93221%2E)
7. Andrew Kehler. 1993. The effect of establishing coherence in ellipsis and anaphora resolution. In Proceedings, 28th Annual Meeting of the ACL, Columbus, OH. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Andrew+Kehler%2E+1993%2E+The+effect+of+establishing+coherence+in+ellipsis+and+anaphora+resolution%2E+In+Proceedings%2C+28th+Annual+Meeting+of+the+ACL%2C+Columbus%2C+OH%2E)
8. Owen Rambow and Tanya Korelsky. 1992. Applied text generation. In Third Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing, pages 40–47, Trento, Italy. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Owen+Rambow+and+Tanya+Korelsky%2E+1992%2E+Applied+text+generation%2E+In+Third+Conference+on+Applied+Natural+Language+Processing%2C+pages+40%E2%80%9347%2C+Trento%2C+Italy%2E)
9. Ivan A. Sag. 1976. Deletion and Logical Form. Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Published 1980 by Garland Publishing, New York). [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Ivan+A%2E+Sag%2E+1976%2E+Deletion+and+Logical+Form%2E+Ph%2ED%2E+thesis%2C+Massachusetts+Institute+of+Technology%2E+%28Published+1980+by+Garland+Publishing%2C+New+York%29%2E)
10. Marilyn A. Walker. 1996. Limited attention and discourse structure. Computational Linguistics, 22-2:255–264. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Marilyn+A%2E+Walker%2E+1996%2E+Limited+attention+and+discourse+structure%2E+Computational+Linguistics%2C+22%2D2%3A255%E2%80%93264%2E)