Some Remarks on the Licensing Condition on the Null Argument in Korean (and Japanese)

Abstract

This squib examines Oku's (1998) and Takahashi's (2011, in press)ellipsis analysis of the null argument in Japanese and Korean, and theaccompanying licensing condition on it. Oku proposed that the ellipticalnull argument in these languages is literally unrealized in overt syntax,but is reconstructed in covert syntax to meet the 'weak' selectionalfeature of a verb. Takahashi also proposed to attribute the delaying ofthe structure building for the null argument to the absence ofagreement/phi-features. Despite their brilliant endeavors to account forthe parametric differences in the availability of the null argument, theyare shown to confront some non-trivial problems. We explore analternative analysis of the null argument, proposing that it is not aDP-substitute but an NP-substitute. Based on this proposal, we providean account not only of the reason for the phonologically null form ofargument and the lack of verbal agreement in Korean and Japanese, butalso of the parametric variation in the availability of the null argument.