Verb phrase deletion in English: a base-generated analysis

Abstract

Sentences (1) and (2) have traditionally been related by a process that is called Verb Phrase Deletion (VPD).(1) If I wanted to collect bottles, I would collect bottles.(2) If I wanted to collect bottles, I would.The earliest analyses of this phenomenon suggested that (2) was derived from (1) by a syntactic deletion rule (hence the ‘deletion’ in the name of the process – cf. Ross (1969a)). Later (Jackendoff, 1972; Wasow, 1972; Fiengo, 1974; and Williams, 1977a, among others), it was suggested that a null anaphor was generated in the base followingwouldin (2), and that the semantic component read this anaphor as meaningcollect bottles, hence accounting for the synonymy of (1) and (2). A third possibility is that (2) is generated in the base with nothing followingwould, woulditself serving as a proform forwould collect bottles. And fourth, (2) could be derived from (1), leavingwouldas a proform, in a process resembling pronominalization more than deletion (perhaps ‘proverbalization’).