Deletion under semantic Identity
What to do if you want to adopt a proform approach, but this is not compatible with your syntactic assumptions?!
The PF-deletion approach to ellipsis allows for a transformational style syntax to build up structures as usual, while treating ellipsis as a PF phenomenon. Whereas the proform analysis leaves the content of the ellipsis site undecided until after ellipsis has been resolved, the PF-deletion approach commits early to the content of the ellipsis site. To achieve the same effect of the proform theory, the PF-deletion approach needs to find a semantic antecedent just like the proform theory, but then must verify that the content of the ellipsis site matches this.
We will talk about why some people think that purely syntactic properties of antecedents must play a role in ellipsis next time.