External Remerge and Parasitic Gap Constructions in English

Abstract

The goal of this paper is two-folded. First, it aims to provide an argument for the so-called 'non-separate chain approach' to Parasitic Gap constructions (PGCs) in English, by examining the patterns of anaphor reconstruction. Bruening and Khalaf (2017) show that an anaphor can reconstruct to both a parasitic gap (PG) and real gap (RG) position, and we take this finding as compelling evidence in favor of the 'non-separate chain' view. Secondly, this paper presents a derivational analysis of anaphor reconstruction. We argue that the 'symmetric' pattern of anaphor reconstruction can be derived by an External Remerge (ER)-based analysis of the kind suggested in Park et al. (2017). In so doing, we demonstrate that deep island effects, which are originally shown by Chung (2017) to be problematic for de Vries's (2013) ER analysis, can be successfully handled by Park et al.