We investigate the underexplored question of when speakers make use of the omission phenomenon verb phrase ellipsis (VPE) in English given that the full form is also available to them. We base the interpretation of our results on the well-established information-theoretic Uniform Information Density (UID) hypothesis: Speakers tend to distribute processing effort uniformly across utterances and avoid regions of low information by omitting redundant material through e.g. VPE. We investigate the length of the omittable VP and its predictability in context as sources of redundancy which lead to larger or deeper regions of low information and an increased pressure to use ellipsis. We use both naturalness rating and self-paced reading studies in order to link naturalness patterns to potential processing difficulties. For the length effects our rating and reading results support a UID account. Surprisingly, we do not find an effect of the context on the naturalness and the processing of VPE. We suggest that our manipulation might have been too weak or not effective to evidence such an effect.

中文翻译：

---

UID在动词短语省略用法中的作用：长度和上下文效应的心理语言证据

考虑到说话者也可以使用完整的形式，因此我们调查了一个尚待探讨的问题，即说话者何时使用英语中的省略现象动词短语省略号（VPE）。我们基于公认的信息理论统一信息密度（UID）假设对结果进行解释：演讲者倾向于通过发声方式将处理效果均匀地分配到各个发声中，并通过省略VPE等多余材料来避免出现信息不足的区域。我们研究了可省略VP的长度及其在上下文中的可预测性，作为冗余的来源，这些冗余会导致更大或更深的低信息区域以及增加使用省略号的压力。我们使用自然等级和自定进度的阅读研究，以将自然模式与潜在的加工困难联系起来。对于长度影响，我们的评分和阅读结果均支持UID帐户。令人惊讶的是，我们没有发现上下文对VPE的自然性和处理的影响。我们建议我们的操作可能太弱或无法有效证明这种效果。