Merge, Selection, and Ellipsis-Resistant Constituents
1. Introduction: an issue

Satoshi Oku

It has been generally assumed, since Oku (1998), that Adjunct Ellipsis (AdjE) is not possible in Japanese (Takita 2011,Sugisaki 2013, Funakoshi 2016, Sakamoto 2017, etc.). The representative example to demonstrate this point is ones inwhich a manner adjunct is deleted in a negation sentence as in (1). Having (1a) as the antecedent sentence, the most naturalinterpretation of (1b) is that Hanako didn’t wash a car at all, and the manner adjunct inclusive reading as in (1b-ii) isextremely difficult to obtain.
(1) a. Taroo-wa teineini kuruma-o araw-ta. ‘Taro washed a care carefully.’
Taro-TOP carefully car-ACC wash-PSTb. Hanako-wa [e]kuruma-o araw-nak-atta.
i. ‘Hanako didn’t wash a car (at all)’Hanako-TOP
car-ACC wash-NEG-PST
ii. *‘Hanako didn’t wash a car carefully.’
However, it has also been claimed that the adjunct inclusive reading (hence, AdjE) is possible in examples such as (2b).
(2) a. Taroo-wa zibun-no burasi-desono kuruma-o araw-ta. ‘Taro washed that car with his brush.’
Taro-TOP self-GEN bruch-with that car-ACC wash-PST
b. Hanako-wa [e]kono kuruma-oaraw-ta.
‘Hanako washed this car (with her brush).’Hanako-TOP
this car-ACC
wash-PST(see Oku 2016)
In this paper, I argue for the following:(3) a. AdjE is an available operation in Japanese.
b. The fact in (1b)-type examples can be reasonably accounted for by means of the proper
treatment of manner adverbs with respect to negation.
In Section 2, I present the defocusing requirement for Ellipsis, and in Section 3 I examine the semantic property of manneradverbs under negation, which explains the type of AdjE in (1b). Section 4 suggests that the source of the argument-adjunctasymmetry under negation is whether they are semantically selected by the predicate or not. Section 5 is the conclusion.

2. Defocusing Requirement for Ellipsis
One natural and reasonable semantic/discourse precondition for ellipsis is that the elided constituent must be defocused.
(4)
Defocusing Requirement:
Ellipsis/Deletion presupposes the defocusing of the target constituent.
(see Tancredi 1992)
For instance, although Argument Ellipsis (AE) is available in Japanese (Oku 1998, Saito 2007, Takahashi 2008, etc.), when
the target constituent must be focused, AE is impossible (Ikawa 2013, Sugisaki 2012, Saito 2017, Oku 2013). Consider (5):(5) a. John-wa nani-otabe-tano?
‘What did John eat?’John-TOP what-ACC
eat-PST Q
b. Bill-wa [e]tabe-tano?
Lit. ‘Bill ate [e]?’ *‘What did Bill eat?’Bill-TOP
eat-PST Q(Possible only as a polarity question: ‘Did Bill eat something?’)Given that a wh-phrase is inherently focused in the sentence, it is naturally accounted for why (5b) does not have the AE
reading: it is against the defocusing requirement (4). Now let us closely examine the semantic nature of manner adjuncts
under negation.
3. Argument-Manner Adjunct Asymmetry under Negation
Let us first look at (6) where the verb tabe ‘eat’ takes an object argument.
(6) a. Taroo-wa pizza-otabe-ta.
‘Tao ate the pizza.’
Taro-TOP pizza-ACC eat-PST
b. Hanako-wa [VP pizza-otabe]-nak-atta. ‘Hanako didn’t eat the pizza.’ (The whole VP is the focus of Neg)
Hanako-TOP
pizza-ACC eat-NEG-PST
 Argument Ellipsisb’. Hanako-wa [VP pizza-otabe]-nak-atta
Hanako-TOP
pizza-ACC
eat-NEG-PST
The most natural interpretation of (6b), as far as I can see, is that the whole VP is negated and crucially (6b) does notimplicate that Hanako ate something else. In other words, it is difficult to interpret (6b) in such a way that the verb tabe‘eat’ is outside of the scope of negation and that the object pizza alone is the scope of negation. In this case, AE in (6b’)
retains the same interpretation as (6b). That is, the ellipsis of the part of the focus of negation (i.e., the object argumentalone) is somehow tolerable. Having this in mind, let us next consider (7) where the verb tabe ‘eat’ has no object but isaccompanied with a manner adjunct yukkuri ‘slowly.’(7) a. Taroo-wa yukkuri tabe-ta.
‘Taro ate slowly.’
Taro-TOP slowly
eat-PSTb. Hanako-wa [VP yukkuri tabe]-nak-atta. ‘Hanako didn’t eat slowly.’ (Only yukkuri is the focus of Neg)
Hanako-TOP
slowlyeat-NEG-PST Adjunct Ellipsisb'. Hanako-wa [VP yukkuri tabe]-nak-atta
Lit. *‘Hanako didn’t eat slowly’
Hanako-TOP
slowlyeat-NEG-PST(Adjunct inclusive reading is not possible)
Notice here that the most natural interpretation of (7b) is that Hanako actually ate something but not at a slow speed.
Namely, the sole focus of negation in (7b) is the manner adjunct and the verb tabe ‘eat’ is not under the scope of negation.
Now, since the manner adjunct yukkuri ‘slowly’ is focused and the verb is defocused, deleting the (focused) adjunct alone
and retaining the (defocused) verb is clearly against the defocusing requirement of ellipsis in (4).1 Hence, adjunct ellipsis
under this type of condition is not possible. If this line of reasoning is on the right track, it naturally follows that the adjunctinclusive reading in (2b) is easily available. Nothing prevents the defocusing of the manner adjunct in this case. 2 Next, let
us briefly consider what would be the possible source of this argument-manner adjunct asymmetry observed in (6) and (7).
4. Argument / Manner Adjunct Asymmetry
Why is the object (argument) NP in (6b) not the sole locus of negation (the whole VP is negated) but the manner adjunctin (7b) is? Let me suggest that the crucial difference is whether they are selected (θ-marked) or not. The selected object is
an indispensable element for a transitive verb to be semantically complete; the object-verb set makes a natural semanticunit. Hence, when negated, the whole VP as a unit is the locus of negation. In contrast, adjuncts are optional elements andthus, once introduced in the structure, they function as a semantically salient element. A manner adjunct, for instance, issemantically the most salient among the VP members. This is why, when it appears in a negation sentence, a manner adjunctfunctions as the sole focus of negation, which in turn makes impossible the ellipsis of this type of adjunct under negation.

5. Conclusion
In this paper, I demonstrated that the typical example to show the adjunct ellipsis is impossible has a specific reason for
the impossibility: that is, manner adjuncts inherently function as the sole focus of negation in a negated sentence. Therefore,adjunct ellipsis in general is available in Japanese (contra what has generally been assumed in the field).

References: Funakoshi, K. (2016) “Verb-Stranding Verb Phrase Ellipsis in Japanese,” JEAL 25, 113-142. / Ikawa, H.
(2012) “What the Ineligibility of Wh-phrases for Argument Ellipsis Tells Us: On the Inertness of Phonetically NullElements,” Online Proceedings of GLOW in Asia 2012. / Kuno, S. (1982) “Principles of Discourse Deletion – Case Studies
from English, Russian, and Japanese,” Journal of Semantics 1, 61-93. / Oku, S. (1998) A Theory of Selection andReconstruction in the Minimalist Program. Ph.D. diss. UConn. / Oku, S. (2009) “Minimalism and Information Structure:
A Case of Ellipsis in Japanese,” WAFL 5, 257-269. / Oku, S. (2013) “Japanese Ellipsis Revisited: Defocusing, Remnants,and Adjuncts,” presented at the 31st General Meeting of ELSJ (November 9, 2013), Fukuoka Univ. / Oku, S. (2016) “ANote on Ellipsis-Resistant Constituents,” Nanzan Linguistics 11, 57-70. / Saito, M. (2007) “Notes on East Asian ArgumentEllipsis,” Language Research 43, 203-227. / Saito, M. (2017) “Ellipsis.” In M. Shibatani, S. Miyagawa, and H. Noda, eds.
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UConn. / Sugisaki, K. (2013) “Argument Ellipsis in Acquisition,” Nanzan Linguistics 9, 147-171. / Takita, K. (2011) “AnArgument for Argument Ellipsis from –Sika NPIs,” NELS 39, 771-784. / Tanabe, T. (2021) “Adjunct Ellipsis in Japanese,”
ms. Hokkaido Univ. / Tancredi, C. (1992) Deletion, Deaccenting, and Presupposition, Ph.D. diss. MIT.
* The current work is partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 18K0051908.
1
The same generalization is proposed in Kuno’s (1982) Pecking Order of Deletion Principle. See also Oku (2009).
2Tanabe (2021) argues that subject-oriented adjuncts (which are not under the scope of negation) can be easily elided,
which provides another support for the claim developed in this paper.