Pro-verb


In linguistics, a pro-verb is a word or partial phrase that substitutes for a contextually recognizable verb phrase, obviating the need to repeat an antecedent verb phrase. A pro-verb is a type of anaphora that falls within the general group of word classes called pro-forms. Many languages use a replacement verb as a pro-verb to avoid repetition: English "do",,.
The parallels between the roles of pronouns and pro-verbs on language are "striking": both are anaphoric and coreferential, able to replace very complex syntactic structures. The latter property makes it sometimes impossible to replace a pro-verb with a verb, thus its utility goes beyond the stylistic variation of word substitution. When choosing between substituting a pro-verb and repeating a verb, in multiple languages, including English, French, and Swedish the repetition is preferred by a wide margin. In many cases this is due to the presence of different objects, like in "I will read your letter every day, as a Christian reads the Gospels". Chance of using a pro-verb increases as the complexity of the verb phrase being replaced grows; verbs in the passive voice have lower chance of being substituted by a pro-verb.
The pro-verb construction can be applied when a "direct construction" is used in the verb phrase, or with an "indirect construction" with a preposition. In the latter case, the preposition, depending on the language and context, can be either omitted from the pro-verb construct, added, copied, or modified. For example, in modern Swedish any preposition in a verb phrase is replaced by in the pro-verb

In English

The term "pro-verb" has been used in English linguistics since the 19th century. A standard example is provided by variations of the verb "do": "I liked the movie; she did too". The discussions about the precise role of "do" in this context are ongoing in the 21st century.
English does not have dedicated pro-verbs. Auxiliary and catenative verbs that take bare infinitives can be said to double as pro-verbs by implying rather than expressing them. Similarly, the auxiliary verbs have and be can double as pro-verbs for perfect, progressive, and passive constructions by eliding the participle. When there is no other auxiliary or catenative verb, do can be used as with do-support unless the antecedent verb is to be.
The following are some examples of these kinds of pro-verb:
  • Who can tell? —No one can.
  • Why can't he do it? —He can ; he just won't.
  • I like pie, as does he.
  • Can you go to the park? No, I cannot .
Note that, when there are multiple auxiliary verbs, some of these may be elided as well. For example, in reply to "Who's been leaving the milk out of the refrigerator?", any of "You've been doing it", "You have been", or "You have" would have the same meaning.
Since a to-infinitive is just the particle to plus a bare infinitive, and a bare infinitive can be elided, the particle to doubles as a pro-verb for a to-infinitive:
  • Clean your room! —I don't want to.
  • He refused to clean his room when I told him to.
Finally, even in dialects where bare infinitives and participles can be elided, there does exist the pro-verb do so: "He asked me to leave, so I did so". This pro-verb, unlike the above-described pro-verbs, can be used in any grammatical context; however, in contexts where another pro-verb could be used, it can be overly formal. For example, in "I want to get an 'A', but to do so, I need to get a perfect score on the next test," there is no other pro-verb that could be used; whereas in "I want to get an 'A', but I can't do so," the do so could simply be elided, and doing so would make the sentence sound less formal.
Some works, like A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, would consider pro-verbs in English as purely substitutional, unlike the coreferential pronouns.
English primarily uses direct objects, and absence of propositions is usually mirrored in the pro-verb. However, in the past, a preposition could have been affixed to the pro-verb: "She let him go — as a cat might have done to a mouse". In the modern English, as found online, there is a tendency to insert "with", especially if the verb phrase is complex or pro-verb precedes the verb phrase.

In Swedish

is considered by the scholars of Swedish language as a or, the latter term reflects the typical use with pronoun, like .
The pro-verb phrases in Swedish use indirect construction for the object. While in the past the preposition appears to be typically omitted in the pro-verb, the modern language requires to use a single preposition,, regardless of the preposition in the verb phrase, even if it produces an awkward syntax, .

In French

In French, terms are used to describe the pro-verb. The role of pro-verb is played by the verb .
Olof Eriksson, a professor of French linguistics, offers the following example to illustrate that pro-verbs in French are not purely substitutional:. Here, the replacement with enables to start in the proper syntactic context of a comparative clause attached to the whole of.
The pronominal object in French naturally precludes the use of pro-verbs: "You don't love me as much as I do you" cannot be translated to French using the pro-verb. Four prepositions can be used between a pro-verb and an object:. is the most used one, but, currently in the third place by the frequency of use, is rapidly catching up. Ericsson explains the tendency by close proximity of this proposition to English "with" and.

In Russian

Pro-verbs are generally absent in Russian. One of the rare exceptions, "", is used similarly to its English equivalent. The other example is provided by the colloquial use of the extremely obscene expressions where the verb derivatives from the most used obscene roots lost their original semantics and their meaning is defined almost entirely by the affixes and context.

In Chinese

In Chinese, the pro-verb role is sometimes played by the character : in, the meaning of 来 is actually "do it". Understanding that 来 can be an equivalent of the pronoun for verbs was first suggested by Zhao Yuanren in 1968.