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A New View of to-Contraction*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Donald G. Frantz
Donald G. Frantz*
Affiliation:
University of Lethbridge
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Extract

All treatments of so-called to-contraction in English (Lakoff (1970), Bresnan (1971), Lightfoot (1976)) attempt to deal with this phenomenon entirely in terms of contiguity. The purpose of this squib is to point out that the major constraint on this phenomenon is rather one of subject coreference, and furthermore that this coreference condition is identical to that for a universal rule which I have called ‘equi-subject clause union’ (Frantz 1976).

To illustrate, I will reconsider typical examples cited in discussions of this phenomenon, pointing out the relevance of coreference.

Type
Remarks/Remarques
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Fall 1979 , pp. 137 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1979

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Footnotes

*

This is a slightly revised version of a paper by the same title which appeared in Daly (1977). I am indebted to Paul Postal for pointing out serious inadequacies in a much different earlier version of this paper. Of course, he is not responsible for any remaining inadequacies.

References

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