Remarks on the Apparent Amelioration of MaxElide Violations

According to Merchant’s (2008) MaxElide, ellipsis must target the biggest deletable constituent when it contains an A’-trace. This straightforwardly accounts for the well-known contrast between the matrix IP-ellipsis and the matrix VP-ellipsis in Sluicing environment. However, it is observed that targeting certain types of embedded VP induces a much improved status, giving an illusion that a MaxElide violation is ameliorated. In this paper, I argue that it is indeed an illusion by claiming that the improved status arises since MaxElide alone, but not (a version of) Parallelism, is violated. This entails that when both MaxElide and Parallelism are violated, an cumulative effect arises, inducing much severe degradedness. We argue that the severe degradedness of the matrix VP-ellipsis represents such a case.