Notes on Deletion Not Dependent on Linguistic Context

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine cases of deletion not dependent on linguistic context. Perlmutter (1971) claims that any sentence other than an imperative¹ in which there is an S that does not contain a subject in the surface structure is ungrammatical. Dillon (1978) counts elliptical sentences such as ^ Beg your pardon² as grammatically incomplete (and hence as strictly ungrammatical). Such statements are, however, not without problems for reasons that will be given below.