WCO, ACD, and the positions of subjects

This paper presents a brief argument from the interaction of weak crossover (WCO), antecedent-contained deletion (ACD), and other facts of VP-ellipsis that subjects are base-generated in a predicateinternal position but move through an intermediate A-position on their way to their final landing site (the specifier of TP) and can take scope in this intermediate position. The following example, from Evans 1988 (14), is a puzzle for standard accounts of VP-ellipsis and weak crossover: (1) Someone who shouldn’t have kissed each man. As Evans points out, this sentence is ambiguous, having among its possible readings the one given in (2), which will be of interest here. (2) ∀x(man(x) → ∃y[person(y) ∧ kissed(y, x) ∧ shouldn′t-have-kissed(y, x)]) The important thing to note in characterizing this reading is that the deleted VP in the relative clause adjoined to the subject DP contains a variable bound by the object quantifier. It is parallel, thus, to more familiar and often discussed examples like (3a), which has a reading like that of (3b) (see Sag 1976, Dalrymple et al. 1991, Hardt 1999, among many others): (3) a. John greeted each arriving guest after Mary did. b. John greeted [each arriving guest]1 after Mary greeted him1.