Cohesive substitution in English and German 221
(40) John is smoking more now than Mary is doing.
(41) John is smoking more now than he should be doing.
(42) John is smoking more now than he used to do.
(43) John is smoking more now than he was doing before.
(44) You think Joan already knows? – I think everybody does.
(40) to (44) have no exact structural parallel in German. A similar cohesive func-
tion can be realized by various types of ellipsis, i.e. another case of ‘same function –
different cohesive device’:
(45) John raucht jetzt mehr als Mary 0.
(46) John raucht jetzt mehr als er sollte 0.
(47) John raucht jetzt mehr als er es zu tun pflegte.
(48) John raucht jetzt mehr als vorher 0.
(49) Meinst Du, dass Joan das schon weiß? Ich glaube, alle (wissen/tun(?) das)
Observe that a somewhat forced variant (45a) constitutes a combination of lexical
cohesion with the general verb tun plus an obligatory es/das.
(45a) John raucht jetzt mehr als Mary es/das tut.
In addition, verbal substitution in English can be construed by do + so:
(50) Peter rented a car. So did I.
Peter hat sich ein Auto gemietet. (Das) habe ich auch (getan/gemacht).
Do + so may be employed for co-reference relations or type-reference relations
(Quirk et al. 1985: 873).
Verbal substitution in German can marginally be realized by tun or machen.
But these are highly general full lexical verbs and still need their valency satisfied
as in (45a or 47). They are therefore not a grammatical parallel to the English sub-
stituting do-constructions, and their use in lexically cohesive function is restricted
in register: the cohesive effect in the German version (50a) is due to reference (es/
das) plus lexical cohesion (tun/machen) and the particle auch. Note that ellipsis is
possible as a variant:
(50a) Peter hat sich ein Auto gemietet. (Das) habe ich auch (getan/gemacht).
Just because tun and machen are still full lexical verbs, they can substitute verbs
of action only, hence the acceptability of (51) in English and the contrasting non-
acceptability of its parallel in German:
(51) Peter’s house collapsed. So did mine.
Peters Haus ist eingestürzt. *Das tat auch meines.