The Choice between Verbal Anaphors in Discourse

This paper investigates the conditions of choice in discourse between various verbal anaphors in English, namely Post-Auxiliary Ellipsis with auxiliary do; do so; and do it/this/that. On the basis of an extensive corpus survey, the following factors are shown to be relevant: (i) register, (ii) the presence or absence of an accessible polar alternative, (iii) whether the sentence containing the anaphor refers to the same state of affairs as that which contains the antecedent, (iv) the presence of a non contrastive adjunct, (v) the identity of the subject of the anaphor and its antecedent, (vi) the saliency of the antecedent.