A Unified Analysis of English do so and Chinese zheme zuo ‘so do’ in a Coordination Construction

The purpose of this paper is threefold: (i) to describe the semantic restrictions imposed on English do so (henceforth, DS) anaphor and Chinese zheme zuo ‘so do’ (henceforth, SD) anaphor; (ii) to argue that the DS/SD anaphora are not formed through PF deletion but are instead present in underlying representations—more specifically, to propose that an LF-mechanism that is based on the copying of an appropriate function from the antecedent clause onto DS/SD phrases can systematically explain the (un)grammaticality of DS and SD anaphors; and (iii) to argue that, on the basis on various observations, DS and SD anaphors should be classified as instances of deep anaphora. This LF-mechanism can also explain the reason why Á-movement and passive subject movement sentences are impossible with DS/SD phrases. Furthermore, we reveal that (i) do in DS and zuo ‘do’ in SD function as an intransitive verb and a light verb, respectively; (ii) English so and its Chinese counterpart zheme ‘so’ function as an adverb and an NP placeholder, respectively; and (iii) the English so and the Chinese zheme ‘so’ serve the same grammatical function— namely, replacing the VP of the antecedent clause. The findings of this study contribute to a deeper understanding of the syntactic and semantic properties of DS and SD anaphors.