Sloppy identity
In linguistics, sloppy identity is an interpretive property that is found with verb phrase ellipsis where the identity of the pronoun in an elided VP (verb phrase) is not identical to the antecedent VP. For example, English allows VPs to be elided, as in example (1). The elided VP can be interpreted in at least two ways, as follows: The "strict" reading: sentence (1) is interpreted as (1a), where the pronoun his denotes the same referent in both the antecedent VP and the elided VP. In (1a), the pronoun his refers to John in both the first and the second clause.