Auxiliary Verbs and VP Ellipsis in English

Abstract

This paper investigates the interaction of auxiliary verbs with VP ellipsis. Park (2017) initially notes that what he calls Copular Phrase Ellipsis (CoPE), a VP ellipsis containing the copula ‘be’ is allowed when T-to-C movement applies in the matrix clause with object wh-extraction, but it is not in the embedded clause with object wh-extraction but without T-to-C movement. After examining more relevant data, we find that Park’s analysis cannot successfully account for them. Taking the empirical generalization of the issue here to be that a modal auxiliary verb in T needs to be followed by another auxiliary verb in the periphery of VP ellipsis, we attribute this restriction to Albrecht’s (2010) distinction between ellipsis licensor and ellipsis trigger. If available, the additional auxiliary verb as an ellipsis trigger following the modal in T as an ellipsis licensor is recruited to locally permit the elision of VP. But when T-to-C raising applies, the syntactic relation that triggers it (the relation between T and the moving wh-object at the edge of VP ellipsis) can in turn directly allow the elision of VP.