Antecedent-contained deletion

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Antecedent-contained deletion is a phenomenon found in VP-elision (verb phrase elision) contexts containing a quantifier. To understand the issue involved, it is necessary to understand how VP-elision works. Consider the following examples.

(1) John washed the dishes, and so did Mary.
(2) John washed the dishes on Tuesday, and so did Mary.

In both of these sentences, the VP has been elided in the second half of the sentence ("and so did Mary"). In both cases, the elided VP must be identical to the antecedent in the first clause. That is, in (1), so can only mean "wash the dishes" and in (2), so can only mean "wash the dishes on Tuesday." Note that the word "so" does not have to be present. Consider the following examples. Here, we represent the elided VP with the symbol Δ.

(3) John read a book, and Mary did Δ, too.

Here, Δ = "read a book". Now we get to the problematic cases (first noticed by Bouton, 1970). Consider the following sentence:

(4) John read every book Mary did Δ.

First, let's isolate the VP that Δ refers to. Remember the elided VP must be identical to its referent. That is, it must be the same exact VP that is predicated of John.

(5) Δ = "read every book that Mary did Δ"

But, we see that this VP contains an elided VP itself, so we replace that elided VP with its referent:

(6) Δ = "read every book that Mary did read every book that Mary did Δ"

The reader can easily verify at this point that this sentence leads to infinite regress. To avoid this problem, May (1985) proposes that the NP "every book that Mary did" undergoes quantifier raising (QR) to a position above the verb.

(7) [every book that Mary did Δ]i John read ti.

Now, the reference for the elided VP is simply the following:

(8) read ti

If we replace the elided VP in (7), Δ, with (8), we get the following

(9) [every book that Mary did read ti]i John read ti.

The problem of infinite regress is now avoided.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Baltin, Mark. 1987. Do Antecedent-Contained Deletions Exist? Linguistic Inquiry 18 (4):579-595.
  • Bouton, L. 1970. Antecedent-Contained Pro-forms. In Proceedings of Sixth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, ed. M. Campbell Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
  • Hornstein, Norbert. 1994. An Argument for Minimalism: The Case of Antecedent-Contained Deletion. Linguistic Inquiry 25 (3):455-480.
  • Kennedy, Christopher. 1997. Antecedent-Contained Deletion and the Syntax of Quantification. Linguistic Inquiry 28 (4):662-688.
  • May, Robert. 1985. Logical Form: Its Structure and Derivation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.