Earticle

This paper explores a PF deletion approach to ellipsis by investigating the interaction between ellipsis and agreement. In particular, we first note that standard agreement obtains in the there existential construction even when the so-called associate DP/NP within it is included in the domain affected by the operation of VP ellipsis. We argue that this phenomenon cannot be accounted for by assuming Wasow's (1972) empty structure hypothesis and Lobeck's (1995) pro hypothesis on ellipsis. Rather the phenomenon constitutes conclusive evidence in favor of a PF deletion hypothesis on ellipsis, which allows syntactic features of lexical terms in the domain of ellipsis to come into play just like those of non-deleted ones. We also show that the left-edge Aux deletion construction recently discussed by Fitzpatrick (2006) renders additional evidence in favor of a PF deletion approach to ellipsis, but the gapping construction in English seems not to involve ellipsis, in that it behaves in a markedly different way from the two constructions just noted. In the latter part of the paper we examine the absence of subject clitic or agreement on Comp when sluicing or IP deletion applies in the dialects of Dutch, and attempt to accommodate this phenomenon into the larger picture of ellipsis.