The Role of Topics in Licensing Anaphoric Relations in VP-ellipsis

The paper addresses the role of topics in the licensing of anaphoric relations. I will show that the C-domain plays a crucial role in accounting for valid and invalid cases of coreference. In particular, I will argue that discourse anaphors are bound by a context operator, implying that the mechanism that corresponds to coreference is syntactically encoded. The crucial empirical evidence comes from the licensing of strict and sloppy readings in VP-ellipsis which are argued to follow from an alternative analysis of the role of focus binding in the account of Rooth (1992). A topic hypothesis is proposed which requires that a coreferential expression enters into an Agree-relation with a topic head in the C-domain. Impossible cases of coreference are ruled out as violations of the locality contraint imposed by the syntactic Agree-relation.