Some Remarks on the VP-Dislocation Analysis of English VP-Fronting

The paper begins with introduction of the properties of VPF such as connectivity, reconstruction, strong island effects, etc. Then Ott’s dislocation analysis of VPF analogous to the DP-Left-Dislocation construction is reviewed employing three striking strategies: (i) postulation of pro-VP null that in the host clause (ii) bi-clausal structure parallel to each other (iii) ellipsis approach to the external clause. I investigate the pros and cons of the VP-dislocation analysis, and address strong points in comparison with the traditional movement analysis, arguing that the VP-dislocation analysis is superior to the movement analysis in explaining the auxiliary doubling phenomenon. I point out shortcomings with the dislocation analysis: It is demonstrated that the VP-dislocation approach to VPF cannot explain the tense-doubling effect, allows to elide non-constituents in the external clause, and also suffers somewhat from examples exhibiting strong island sensitivity due to the nominal-gap requirement which can cause inconsistency in the analysis. I claim that the semantic type mismatch arises in the VPF construction according to the VP-dislocation analysis. I thus suggest the necessity of a more refined formulation in order to obtain mutual entailment relationship between propositions of the two clauses in the VPF construction.