Causative VP-omission in English
Richard Stockwell, Matthew Tyler
May 2022
 

New title: "Causative VP-omission, agency, and Null Complement Anaphora in English"

In English, the causation verbs 'make' and 'let' allow their following VP to be omitted: 'I made/let Chris play the drums before I made/let Sam (play the drums)'. We show that such 'causative VP-omission' involves Null Complement Anaphora rather than Predicate Ellipsis, and requires an agentive causee. We analyse this restriction — which extends to Null Complement Anaphora with aspectual verbs — as resulting from an interaction between a non-stative null pro-form and Voice (cf. Folli and Harley 2005).

Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/006496
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: v2: submitted. v1: to appear in proceedings of NELS 52
keywords: syntax, english, causatives, null complement anaphora, ellipsis, voice, agency, syntax
previous versions: v1 [February 2022]
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