Japanese/Korean Linguistics

This paper argues that Japanese owns VP ellipsis observed in British English (do complement ellipsis, Light verb complement deletion) in terms of apparent VP ellipsis (VP ellipsis with a particle) and Sino-Japanese VP ellipsis. Apparent VP ellipsis cannnot be captured by vP ellipsis in English (Fujii 2016, Funakoshi 2020) and argument ellipsis (Sakamoto 2021), considering extraction, nominal property of VP with a particle, and selection. Light verb complement deletion approach is proposed to reconcile these issues. In addition, the current analisis is shown to be extended to Sino-Japanese VP ellipsis (Hayashi 2015). This extension explains its extraction possibilities, which is mysterious in vP ellipsis approach in Hayashi (2015). Finally, Phase Complement Condition, which stipulates only the phase head complement undergoes LF copy, while the others are deleted by PF-Deletion, is pointed out to correctly describe patterns of extraction from ellipsis such as vP ellipsis, predicate ellipsis, and (nominal) argument ellipsis.