Licensing ConditiDns on Null Operators

Parasitic Gaps (PGs) are now familiar objects on the syntactic landscape. A PG is an empty category in a Case-marked NP position that shares with Wh-trace the property of being A-bar bound but differs from Wh-trace insofar as it appears to bave the privilege of occuring in positions that are in some sense inaccessible to movement. Thus the PG in (1,2) (represented as ~) appears in a position that is locally governed and Case-marked by V (1) or P (2); the PG must be construed as a variable bound by the matrix Wh-phrase, implying that it is A-bar bound by that Wh-phrase; but the PG appears in an adjunct gerund (1) or purpose clause (2), from which Wh-movement to the matrix Comp is normally blocked. It is the latter sense in which the PG is parasitic; its grarnrnaticality depends on the existence of a licensing "true" Wh-trace (~), which is not reciprocally dependent on the presence of the PG.