8 - Inferior defenses could then, as now, be tackled, as Vernon did at Porto Bello, Exmouth at Algiers, & Seymour at Alexandria.

Summary

Discusses a syntactically complex example from Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, which he analyzes as a problematic use of the passive voice. Begins with Fowler’s analysis and then provides a more detailed syntactic analysis, which shows how the example involves not only displacement with the passive, but also auxiliary do and two distinct kinds of verbal ellipsis in English. The interaction of these factors illuminates how ellipsis in syntax is actually distinct from the operation that deletes phonetic material to produce ellipsis constructions.