Syntactic haplology and the Dutch proform er

Abstract

Dutch has four pronouns "er" which show an intriguing pattern of syntactic haplology when a finite verb has more than one "er" dependent. We present a theory that captures this pattern by relying on two central aspects of HPSG: (i) the distinction between ARG-ST and COMPS and (ii) the distinction between canonical and non-canonical synsem objects. No deletion rules of the kind used in transformational analyses of "er" are necessary.