Argument ellipsis, weak heads, and labeling by Case

Abstract This paper proposes licensing conditions on argument ellipsis in terms of labeling. Given the LF copy analysis of argument ellipsis, the absence of φ-feature agreement is an overall necessary condition because of the activation condition on agreement. The paper assumes Richards’ (2003) proposal that an elided element counts as a head in syntactic structure, and proposes that one of two conditions, in addition, must be satisfied so that the constituent with an elided argument is properly labeled. The first is the presence of suffixal Case as a weak head. This accounts for argument ellipsis in Japanese/Korean and object ellipsis in Turkish and Malayalam. The second is Case feature sharing between a transitive verb and its complement. This is observed in object ellipsis in Chinese. Independent evidence for labeling by Case feature sharing is presented with the analysis of tensed clauses in Malayalam and N’(NP) ellipsis.