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Antecedent-contained deletion (= antecedent-contained ellipsis, ACD) is a phenomenon found in contexts containing verb phrase ellipsis and a quantifier. The ellipsis appears to be contained inside its antecedent, which should result in an infinite regress and thus ungrammaticality. The problem arises in phrase structure grammars that take the constituent to be the fundamental unit of syntactic analysis.〔See for instance Bouton (1970), Sag (1976), May (1985), Baltin (1987), Hornstein (1994), and Kennedy (1997).〕 It does not arise if the catena is taken to be the fundamental unit.〔Concerning the catena unit in general, see Osborne et al. (2013).〕 The catena is associated with dependency grammars (DGs).〔See for example Ágel et al. (2003/6).〕 ==The problem in phrase structure grammars== To understand the issue involved, it is necessary to understand how VP-ellipsis works. Consider the following examples, where the expected, but elided, VP is represented with a smaller font and subscripts and the antecedent to the ellipsis is in bold: ::John washed the dishes, and Mary did wash the dishes, too. ::John washed the dishes on Tuesday, and Mary did wash the dishes on Tuesday, too. In both of these sentences, the VP has been elided in the second half of the sentence. In both cases, the elided VP should be essentially identical to the antecedent in the first clause. That is, the missing VP in the first sentence can only mean ''wash the dishes'', and in the second sentence, the missing VP can only mean ''wash the dishes on Tuesday''. Assuming that the missing VP must be essentially identical to an antecedent VP leads to a problem, first noticed by Bouton (1970): ::John read every book that Mary did read every book that Mary did read every book that Mary did read every book etc.. Since the elided VP must be essentially identical to its antecedent and assuming that the antecedent is a full VP, an infinite regress occurs, as indicated by the subscripted material, which would continue to repeat itself ad infinitum. That is, if we substitute in the antecedent VP into the position of the ellipsis, we must repeat the substitution process ad infinitum. The difficulty is illustrated further with the tree for the sentence: ::Antecedent-containment tree 1 The light grey font indicates the elided constituent, i.e. the ellipsis, and the underline marks the antecedent constituent to the ellipsis. Since the antecedent constituent contains the ellipsis itself, resolution of the ellipsis necessitates an infinite regress as the antecedent is substituted ad infinitum into the ellipsis cite. To avoid this problem, Sag (1976) proposed that the NP ''every book that Mary did'' undergoes ''quantifier raising'' (QR) to a position above the verb.〔Culicover (1997:283ff.) provides an overview and critique of the QR analysis of the ACD-phenomenon. Carnie (2013) compares the QR analysis to an alternative movement analysis.〕 ::(book that Mary did... )''i'' John read ''ti''. Now the reference for the elided VP is simply the following: ::read ti The analysis can now assume that the elided VP in the example corresponds to just ''read'', since after QR, the antecedent VP no longer contains the object raised NP. The result is the following analysis: ::(book that Mary did read ) John read. The infinite regress is now avoided because after QR, the antecedent VP contains just the verb ''read''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Antecedent-contained deletion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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