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In:New Insights into Theoretical Syntax from Asian Languages: Studies in honor of C.-T. James Huang
Edited by Andrew Simpson
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 290] 2026
► pp. 183–209

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Argument ellipsis and grammatical function mismatches

 | Tohoku University
Published online: 15 January 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.290.07tak
Abstract
This chapter investigates ellipsis of arguments in Japanese, focusing on whether mismatches in grammatical functions between elided arguments and their antecedents interfere with the ellipsis process in question. Novel data involving extraction from elided arguments are presented, and they show that grammatical function mismatches do not block ellipsis of arguments. This finding supports the view that sentences with elided arguments involve ellipsis of those arguments rather than ellipsis of larger constituents like verb phrases that contain the affected arguments, strengthening the case for the argument ellipsis analysis, where ellipsis of an argument simply needs the presence of an antecedent argument regardless of its structural location.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Extraction out of elided arguments and grammatical function mismatches
    • 3.1The perception verb construction
    • 3.2The psych predicate construction
    • 3.3PP left branch extraction
  • 4.The residue of the VP-Ellipsis analysis
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • The following abbreviations are used in this chapter
  • References
References (41)
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