This paper analyzes the derivations of the DE construction, showing that
an antecedent-free DE construction is derived by deverbalization and an
antecedent-dependent DE construction is derived by ellipsis. Semantically,
the former process is substantivization and the latter defocalization.
Relating the antecedent-dependent DE construction to other nominal
ellipses and the verb gapping construciton, I discuss a new type of ellipsis
which can take an ellipsis site as its linguistic antecedent. Furthermore,
I argue that the syntactic status of the word de in a nominal is a functional
category, heading an nP consistently.