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When coupled with the fact that functional heads are often “empty” (see Section 4.3.1), the typology in (26) also underscores the fact that, at least according to most interpretations of fruitful generative inquiry, natural language contains many gaps. The ubiquity of gaps in natural language – not only as the tops and tails of nonlocal dependencies but also as independent items – has prompted extensive research into the precise status of gaps and whether all gaps have the same status. With regards to the former issue, generative linguists are divided as to whether gaps are linguistic items in their own right, akin to “silent” phrases, words, or morphemes, depending on the gap in question (this tradition starts with Chomsky 1973), or whether they are merely indications of the special grammatical or categorial status of the syntactic phrase in which the gap is found (this tradition took hold with Gazdar et al. 1985). With regards to the issue of whether all gaps have the same status, the picture is also unclear, with differences posited in earlier generative research being subject to reductivist reanalysis, especially within the current post‐1995 Minimalist paradigm. However, many of differences between gaps posited in earlier research can nonetheless be classified as enduring discoveries, as few – if any – reductivist analyses of gaps enjoy universal acceptance.

Famously, different types of gaps have been implicated in explanations of the semantic and syntactic behavior of predicates that select infinitival clauses. Rosenbaum (1967) observed that, despite their superficial similarity, sentences such as (29) and (30) are inherently different in meaning. In (29), Kate is understood as the agent of helping Meghan event, but not of the seeming to help Meghan event (in fact, the latter event has no agent whatsoever). In (30), however, Kate is understood as the agent of both the helping Meghan and the promising to help Meghan event.

1 (29) Kate seems to help Meghan.

2 (30) Kate promises to help Meghan.

This difference in meaning suggests that seem does not assign an agentive thematic role to its subject Kate, whereas promise does. Because this is confirmed by various independent syntactic tests (see Landau 2013), Rosenbaum (1967), Postal (1974), and many researchers since them assume that this difference between seem‐ and promise‐type predicates is reflected in syntactic structure.¹¹ The example in (29) is analyzed as derived by a transformation called raising that “moves” Kate from the subject position in the embedded clause (i.e. immediately preceding to) to the subject position in the root clause (i.e. immediately preceding seems) (31). The gap in (31) is therefore a trace of the position that Kate occupied before raising occurs (see endnote 4).

(31)	Kate seems tKate to help Meghan.	(where tKate is the trace of Kate's raising)
(32)	Kate seems PRO to help Meghan.	(where PRO is silent pronoun interpreted as “Kate”)

By contrast, Rosenbaum treated the gap in (30) as an unpronounced nominal (later analyzed as a silent pronoun called PRO; see Chomsky 1981 for a thorough treatment), which enters into a nonlocal dependency with Kate and is understood as co‐referent with her, yet is not related to Kate through a derivational history (32). In the linguistic jargon, Kate controls the interpretation of PRO.

PRO and standard, pronounced nominals show a complementary syntactic distribution. However, many languages display silent pronouns that can occupy the same positions that pronounced pronouns can, such as the subject position of a finite clause (33). To distinguish them from PROs, these silent pronouns are referred to as “little” pros (Chomsky 1981). Proof that the “missing” subject in (33) is indeed instantiated syntactically by pro (rather than being merely pragmatically inferred) comes from the fact that it engages in a syntactic dependency with the verb for first‐person singular agreement.

(33)	Δpro	sen‐i	gör‐dü‐m	[Turkish]
		2SG‐ACC	see‐PST‐1SG
“I saw you.”

Throughout this section, we have used the symbol Δ to represent gaps, which could give the impression that all gaps are atomic, and hence devoid of internal structure. Although some gaps are indeed atomic (e.g. null simplex syntactic heads, see Section 4.3.1), generative research has shown that many are nonatomic, and therefore have internal complexity. An instructive example comes from the domain of ellipsis. Ellipsis is a family‐resemblance term in generative linguistics, whose archetype is post‐auxiliary predicate ellipsis in English. This refers to sentences in which a predicate – often a verb phrase – is missing yet inferred (34). Evidence that the missing predicate is a syntactic phrase with internal structure comes from the discovery that these silent phrases can contain the tail of a nonlocal dependency (35) (see Haïk 1987 for detailed discussion). If the missing predicate were a simple, atomic syntactic element, then no nonlocal dependency would be established in (35) and the sentence would be unacceptable, contrary to observation.

1 (34) David should arrive on time and Fiona should Δ, too.

2 (35) I know who will arrive on time and also who won't arrive on time Δ.(where strikethrough represents the silent, elliptic predicate)

Beyond ellipsis, there is evidence that gaps in certain A^′‐dependencies also have internal structure. This evidence comes from the phenomenon of reconstruction, which was mentioned briefly in Section 4.3.2. Reconstruction describes situations in which the top member of an A^′‐dependency behaves as though it occupies the tail position of its dependency. Consider the second sentence in (36), in which the reference of her first PhD student is dependent on the reference of every professor (i.e. Professor Brown remembers Olivia, Professor Black remembers Davina, etc.). Recall from (1) that her must be c‐commanded by every professor for this co‐variant interpretation to be possible. On the surface, her first PhD student is not c‐commanded by every professor in (36). However, this phrase is engaged in an A^′‐dependency with a gap that is c‐commanded by every professor, and is interpreted as occupying this position.

1 (36)

Although reconstructed interpretations can arise from different sources (Lechner 1998), it is uncontested that many reconstructed interpretations come from the fact that the gap in certain A^′‐dependencies has internal structure, and is actually a verbatim yet silent copy of the A^′‐dependency's top member (37) (Chomsky 1995 [1993]). Thus, the existence of reconstructed interpretations reveals that many syntactic “gaps” are merely standard yet unpronounced syntactic phrases.

1 (37) … but her first PhD student, every professor will remember her first PhD student.