Verb Phrase Ellipsis
Verb phrase ellipsis (also VP-ellipsis or VPE) is a particularly frequent form of ellipsis in English. VP-ellipsis elides a non-finite VP. The ellipsis must be introduced by an auxiliary verb or by the particle to.
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- John can play the guitar; Mary can play the guitar, too.
- He has done it before, which means he will do it again.
An aspect of VP-ellipsis that is unlike gapping and stripping is that it can occur both forwards and backwards. That is, the ellipsis can both precede and follow its antecedent, e.g.
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- The man who wanted to order the salmon did order the salmon.
- The man who wanted to order the salmon did order the salmon.
Of the various ellipsis mechanisms, VP-ellipsis has probably been studied the most and it is therefore relatively well understood.
Read more about this topic: Ellipsis (linguistics), Types of Ellipsis
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