Syntactic identity in Survive-minimalism

Over the years, a number of counter-examples to the hypothesis that ellipsis resolution is mediated via syntactic identity have been identified. However, in the same time evidence which seems to require comparison of syntactic structures in ellipsis resolution has also been unearthed. On top of this empirical puzzle, survive minimalism places an additional theoretical constraint: syntactic structures, once assembled, are opaque to further search or manipulation. In this paper, I show that a simple perspective shift allows us both to view the purported counter-examples as providing glimpses into the nature of the operations which build syntactic structure, and to satisfy the theoretical constraints imposed by survive minimalism’s derivational take on syntactic structure.