Parasitic participles in the syntax of verbal rather

Abstract In this paper, I discuss the syntax of parasitic participles in (varieties of) colloquial English, which can be found when rather is used as a verb. The syntax of verbal rather has not, to my knowledge, been studied before, and turns out to be of substantial interest, for two reasons. First, it presents a syntactic configuration that is not found elsewhere in the language, with the result that one perfect auxiliary can license two perfect participles. While rare in English, this phenomenon has been studied in a number of other Germanic languages, and has been argued to be diagnostic of restructuring. Second, its syntactic and argument structural properties in ECM contexts suggest that it may license a null variant of ECM have, providing a perhaps unique angle for studying the syntax of verbal elements dependent on the availability of various uses of ‘have’.