No ellipsis-contained antecedents: adjunct-licensed ellipsis in Spanish

While implicitly assumed, the restriction that the antecedent of ellipsis cannot be base-merged within the ellipsis site has not to our knowledge been explicitly stated or analysed. In this article we discuss a pattern of ellipsis in Spanish, resembling gapping but we argue distinct from it, where ellipsis in the main clause can find its antecedent in some but not all adverbial clauses. The adverbial clauses that cannot provide the antecedent for ellipsis are, we argue, those that would have to be interpreted within the ellipsis site at LF. We argue that this pattern and its restrictions supports LF-identity theories of clausal ellipsis, and also provides evidence that remnants of clausal ellipsis move at LF.