(Universidad de Sevilla, 2012) Authier, J. Marc; Haegeman, Liliane
Based on an examination of some asymmetries between VP ellipsis
and VP fronting, this paper argues for an intervention approach and against
a truncation approach to the distribution of main clause phenomena in
adverbial clauses and, by extension, in non-root contexts in general.
Adopting Authier’s (2011) treatment of VP ellipsis whereby the to-be-elided
VP undergoes fronting in the computational component but fails to be
spelled out at PF, these asymmetries follow from the fact that a fronted VP,
being an intervener for wh-movement in adverbial clauses, triggers a PF
crash unless ellipsis allows the derivation to converge via Bošković’s (2011)
‘rescue by PF deletion’ mechanism. This proposal entails that adverbial
clauses are derived by wh-movement (Haegeman (2006) among others) and
that the landing site for VP fronting is available in a non-root environment,
two assumptions that militate against a truncation account of non-root
clauses.
