grammaticality - Adverb placement


Are these sentences all grammatically correct?




  1. I didn't support Gheddafi and I will never support him.




  2. I didn't support Gheddafi and will never support him.




  3. I didn't support Gheddafi and never will support him.





Answer



There are two different factors at work in the three sentences, all of which feature automatic pronominalization (Gheddafi ==> him) in the second clause.


Sentence 1 is the basic sentence. Two main clauses conjoined with and. Both clauses have first person singular subject (I), and both clauses have verb phrases headed by auxiliary verbs (did and will). This is certainly grammatical.


Sentence 2 is just Sentence 1 after Conjunction Reduction has applied. That process deletes the repeated I subject in the second clause, thus reducing the conjoined clauses to a single clause with a single subject, but a conjoined verb phrase. This is also grammatical. Neither 1 nor 2 is problematic, and there is no meaning difference between them; both occur and individual usage varies.


Sentence 3 is Sentence 2 with a different placement of never. This is where noticing that never is a negative turns out to be useful, since the rule for negative placement says that



A negative may occur
either immediately before its "focus"
(the constituent in the sentence that's getting negated -- here it's the verb phrase support him)
or immediately before the beginning of any constituent that contains the focus.



So the following are all OK:



  • I will never support him.

  • I never will support him.

  • I have never supported him.

  • I never have supported him.


because will support him and have supported him are VPs that contain the focussed VP. So never can go either immediately before will/have, or immediately before support(ed). Again, such placement makes no difference in meaning or grammaticality; this is another matter like Conjunction Reduction where individual usage varies.


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