VP Deletion and VP-adverbs Reconsidered

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of what is called VP Deletion (VPD) in English. Of particular concern is how the behavioral difference of VP-adverbs in a deletion construction can be accounted for and how the target of the rule operation can be specified. Pointing out that there is a syntactic distributional variation among VP-adverbs and this is what is responsible for the deletability difference in a VPD construction, we argue that the operation range of VPD can be fixed on a particular projection. It is also claimed that the present analysis contributes to making uncecessary Sag(1976)’s filter that requires the deletion site to follow AUX.