Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Parts of Speech
- Part II Syntactic Constructions
- 11 Complementation
- 12 Mandative constructions
- 13 Expanded predicates
- 14 Concord
- 15 Propredicates
- 16 Tag questions
- 17 Miscellaneous
- Bibliography of British book citation sources
- Bibliography of studies, dictionaries, and corpora
- Index of words
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Parts of Speech
- Part II Syntactic Constructions
- 11 Complementation
- 12 Mandative constructions
- 13 Expanded predicates
- 14 Concord
- 15 Propredicates
- 16 Tag questions
- 17 Miscellaneous
- Bibliography of British book citation sources
- Bibliography of studies, dictionaries, and corpora
- Index of words
Summary
In a clause commenting on or continuing a preceding clause, the predicate may be abbreviated to an auxiliary or several auxiliaries, either echoing those of the preceding clause or newly introduced, sometimes with additional predicate items: “I thought we had been there before, and we had (been)” [i.e., had been there before]. “The first trip exhausted us, and the second probably will too” [i.e., will exhaust us]. “He was thinning out his collection [of books]: authors often do” (1986 Oct. 30 Times 18/2). These second, isolated auxiliaries serve as propredicates, implying the full predicate of the preceding clause.
In addition to such common-core instances, a more limited pattern with a present participle of an auxiliary has been reported as acceptable in some varieties of British (CGEL 12.22n, CamGEL 100, 1523): A: Why don't you sit quietly? B: I AMdoing. Kim is being investigated by the police, and I think Pat isbeingtoo. I've been Rex's mistress for some time now, and I shall go onbeing, married or not. They have all volunteered, but I think some of them regrethaving. None of these seem possible in American, and the last, with having, is said to be acceptable to very few British speakers.
Propredicatedo
In common-core English, intransitive do is used as a propredicate for verbs without any auxiliaries: She volunteered, and hedidtoo.
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- British or American English?A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns, pp. 287 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006