Idioms, argument ellipsis and LF-copy
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Idioms, argument ellipsis and LF-copy Yosuke Sato1
Received: 2 December 2016 / Accepted: 27 April 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In this paper, I make critical use of certain word order and semantic properties of ditransitive expressions to develop an argument for the LF-copy theory of argument ellipsis (Oku in A theory of selection and reconstruction in the minimalist perspective, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 1998; Saito in Lang Res 43:203–222, 2007; in: Shibatani, Miyagawa, and Noda (eds) Handbook of Japanese syntax, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2017; Sakamoto in J East Asian Linguist 25:243–274, 2016; Escape from silent syntax, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 2017). Firstly, I summarize and extend Sakamoto’s (in: Paper presented at the 148th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of Japan, Hosei University, Tokyo, 2014; 2016; 2017) argument based on rigid ditransitive idioms and show that the possible ellipsis of a non-idiomatic argument to the exclusion of the idiom chunks and the ditransitive verb is best accounted for in terms of argument ellipsis. Secondly, I point out a hitherto unnoticed observation, that no internal constituent within ditransitive figurative expressions may undergo ellipsis without losing a non-literal, metaphorical interpretation associated with its containing VP, and I demonstrate how this observation presents critical evidence in favor of the LF-copy theory of argument ellipsis over its competing PF-deletion alternative. Keywords Japanese Argument ellipsis LF-copy PF-deletion Null pronouns VP-ellipsis Ditransitive idioms Ditransitive figurative expressions Compositionality Nanosyntax
& Yosuke Sato [email protected] 1
Department of English Language and Literature, Seisen University, 3-16-21, Higashi Gotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141-8642, Japan
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Y. Sato
1 Introduction Research over the past 20 years or so (Oku 1998; Kim 1999; Saito 2007, 2017; S¸ ener and Takahashi 2010; Sakamoto 2016, 2017; Takahashi 2008a, b, 2014) has amassed considerable empirical evidence pointing to the conclusion that Japanese possesses Argument Ellipsis (AE), which directly targets grammatically required arguments such as subjects and objects. The relevant evidence include, but are not limited to, sloppy/quantificational readings of null arguments, the possibility of adverb-inclusive interpretations associated with empty arguments, VP-internal trapping effects created by scrambling, and the lack of the verb-identity requirement. The focus of current research on AE has therefore shifted from motivating the existence of AE to addressing the nature of AE itself. One contemporary issue within this renewed context is whether AE is to be analyzed through PF-deletion or LF-copy (see Sakamoto 2016, 2017 for an extensive discussion on this point), both of which have been vigorously debated on other elliptic constructions such as sluicing and VP-ellipsis since the earliest days of generative grammar (Ross 1969; Sag 1976; W
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