Gapping as a syntactic dependency

Abstract

This paper deals with Gapping, i.e. the absence of the tensed verb in a clause coordinated with another clause containing the same verb: (1) Mary ate an apple and Peter ate a pear. Based upon Williams’ analysis [Williams, E., 1997. Blocking and anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 28, 577–628], this article shows that gapping should be understood as the syntactic dependency established between the projection of a [+V, −N] null head and the projection of its antecedent. This accounts for the fact that gapping satisfies the characteristics which are attributed to grammatical dependencies. This new analysis of gapping provides an explanation for the existence or non-existence of forward gapping, i.e. the presence of gapping in the second or subsequent conjuncts, both in SVO and SOV languages.