On the Lack of VP-ellipsis in Japanese and Its Ramifications in a Cross-linguistic Perspective

要旨

In this article, I will make a point that the lack of VP-ellipsis in Japanese, both genuine and in-disguise, can receive natural accounts on the assumption that the language in question employs overt [V-v] movement to T in narrow syntax (NS).I will also put the relevant fact in Japanese in a cross-linguistic perspective, arguing that (un)availability of VP-ellipsis in natural language is at least regulated by typology of verbal morphology permitted by UG among other factors.To the extent that the considerations in this article are on the right track, the following two theoretical implications can be drawn: (i) PF-deletion process of chain links (= Chain Reduction) is distinct from PF-deletion for VP-ellipsis, as claimed by Nunes (1999Nunes ( , 2004)), contra Chomsky ( 1993); (ii) Overt movement of a verbal element should be located in NS rather than in the phonological component, as argued by Zwart (2001) and Matushansky (2006) inter alia, contra Chomsky (2001).

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