A CONSTRAINT ON ARGUMENT ELLIPSIS IN CHILD JAPANESE *Koji Sugisaki
Mie University

1. Introduction
It has been claimed in the theoretical literature that one of the distinguishedcharacteristics of East Asian languages is the availability of argument ellipsis (e.g. Kim 1999,
Oku 1998, Saito 2003, 2007, Saito & An 2010, Takahashi 2007, 2008): In languages like
Japanese and Korean, null objects permit not only a strict-identity interpretation but also asloppy-identity interpretation, and the latter reading is argued to derive from ellipsis ofargument DPs.
(1)

Japanese:a.
John-ga
John-NOM

zibun-noself-GEN

konpyuutaa-ocomputer-ACC

kowasita.
destroyed‘John1 destroyed his1 computer.’b.

Mary-moMary-also

kowasita.
destroyed‘Mary2 also destroyed his1 computer / her2 computer.’(2)

Korean:a.
John-iJohn-NOM

caki-uy
self-GEN

khemphyute-lul
computer-ACC

pwuswuessta.
destroyed‘John1 destroyed his1 computer.’b.

Mary-toMary-also

pwuswuessta.
destroyed‘Mary2 also destroyed his1 computer / her2 computer.’(Saito & An 2010)

Not every type of argument can be elided, however. For example, the Japanese sentencein (3b) can only be interpreted as a yes/no question, and does not permit an interpretation as a
* I would like to thank Ayaka Kashitani and Hajime Takeyasu for their help in conducting theexperiment reported in this study. I am grateful to Hee-Don Ahn, Duk-Ho An, Stephen Crain, Takuya
Goro, Hisatsugu Kitahara, Keiko Murasugi, Mineharu Nakayama, Yukio Otsu, Myung-Kwan Park,
William Philip, Yi-ching Su, and especially to Miki Obata, Junri Shimada, Daiko Takahashi, andMamoru Saito for valuable comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply.
Nanzan Linguistics 7, 63-76©2011 Koji Sugisaki

Nanzan Linguistics 7: Research Results and Activities 2010 ~ 2011wh-question. The absence of the latter reading suggests that wh-phrases cannot undergo
argument ellipsis.
(3)a.

Speaker A:

John-wa
nani-otabeta no?
John-TOP what-ACC ate
Q

Speaker B: Ringo.
apple‘What did John eat?’b.

Speaker A:

Dewa, Mary-wa
then Mary-TOP‘An apple.’tabeta no?
ate
Q‘Then, did Mary eat something/that?’ / *‘Then, what did Mary eat?’
This study attempts to demonstrate experimentally that Japanese-speaking preschool
children already have the knowledge about the constraint that argument ellipsis cannot beapplied to wh-phrases. The results are consistent with the view that the relevant constraint
directly follows from the properties of biologically-determined Universal Grammar (UG).
2. Argument Ellipsis in Japanese
The availability of sloppy reading in examples like (1) is unexpected if the object
position is occupied by a null pronoun pro, since pronouns do not permit sloppy-identity
interpretation, as exemplified in (4b).
(4)

a.

John-ga
John-NOM

zibun-noself-GEN

konpyuutaa-ocomputer-ACC

kowasita.
destroyed‘John1 destroyed his1 computer.’b.

Mary-moMary-also

sore-oit-ACCkowasita.
destroyed‘Mary2 also destroyed his1 computer. / *‘Mary2 also destroyed her2 computer.’
In order to account for the availability of sloppy interpretation for null objects inJapanese, Otani and Whitman (1991) built on Huang’s (1991) study on Chinese null objects,
and put forth the analysis in which the relevant interpretation of (1b) stems from VP-ellipsis.
One of the fundamental assumptions of their analysis is that Japanese has overt V-to-T
raising, and hence the sentences in (1) are represented as in (5) in overt syntax. In the LF
component, the antecedent VP is copied onto the empty VP, yielding (6), which contains ananaphor in its object position as well. The LF representation in (6) accounts for the sloppy
interpretation of the sentence involving a null object in (1b).

- 64 -A Constraint on Argument Ellipsis in Child Japanese (K. Sugisaki)

(5)

(6)

In Overt Syntax:a.

[TP John-ga[T' [VP zibun-no konpyuutaa-o tV ]John-NOM
self-GEN computer-ACC

b.

[TP Mary-mo [T' [VPMary-alsoe][T kowasiV-taT ] ] ]destroyed[T kowasiV-taT ] ] ]destroyed

In the LF Component:a.

[TP John-ga[T' [VP zibun-no konpyuutaa-o tV ]John-NOM
self-GEN computer-ACC[T kowasiV-taT ] ] ]destroyedb.

[TP Mary-mo [T' [VP zibun-no konpyuutaa-o tV ]Mary-also
self-GEN computer-ACC[T kowasiV-taT ] ] ]destroyed

Even though the VP-ellipsis analysis successfully explains why null objects in Japanesepermit sloppy interpretations, it faces a variety of problems (see Hoji 1998, Oku 1998, Saito
2007, and Takahashi 2008). Most notable is the observation by Oku (1998) that even nullsubjects allow the sloppy-identity reading, as illustrated in (7): The sentence in (7b) can mean
either that Mary also thinks that John’s proposal will be accepted (the sloppy reading), or that
Mary also thinks that Mary’s proposal will be accepted (the strict reading). Given that
subjects arguably stay outside of VP in overt syntax and in LF, the VP-ellipsis analysis by
Otani and Whitman (1991) would predict that the former interpretation should not be possible
with null subjects, contrary to facts.
(7)a.

John-wa
John-TOP[ zibun-no
self-GEN

teian-gasaiyousareru to ]proposal-NOM accepted-be thatomotteiru.
think‘John1 thinks that his1 proposal will be accepted.’b.

Mary-moMary-also[saiyousareru to ]accepted-be thatomotteiru.
think‘Mary2 also thinks that his1 proposal / her2 proposal will be adopted.’
In order to accommodate both the null-object examples as in (1) and the null-subject
examples as in (7), Oku (1998), Saito (2003, 2007) and Takahashi (2008) (among others) put
forth an alternative analysis in which only the relevant argument DP (not the VP) is elided.1
Under their argument-ellipsis analysis, the sentences in (7) have the representations in (8) inovert syntax. After the derivation enters into LF, the antecedent DP, namely the anaphoric
subject in (8a), is copied onto the empty subject position in (8b), resulting in the LF
representation in (9b), which successfully yields the sloppy interpretation of the null subject.

1

Kim (1999) provides compelling evidence that argument ellipsis is available in Korean.

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Nanzan Linguistics 7: Research Results and Activities 2010 ~ 2011(8)

In Overt Syntax:a.
John-wa [CP [DP zibun-no teian-ga ][T’ saiyousareru ] to ] omotteiru.
John-TOP
self-GEN proposal-NOM
accepted-be that
think
b.

(9)

Mary-mo [CP [DPMary-alsoe][T’ saiyousareru ] to ] omotteiru.
accepted-be thatthink

In the LF Component:a.

John-wa [CP [DP zibun-no teian-ga ][T’ saiyousareru ] to ] omotteiru.
John-TOP
self-GEN proposal-NOM
accepted-be that thinkb.

Mary-mo [CP [DP zibun-no teian-ga ][T’ saiyousareru ] to ] omotteiru.
Mary-also
self-GEN proposal-NOM
accepted-be that think

3. Parametric Variation in Argument Ellipsis and the Anti-agreement Approach
Oku (1998) observes that the availability of argument ellipsis is subject to crosslinguistic variation: Argument ellipsis is permitted in Japanese but is not allowed inlanguages like Spanish or English.2 As illustrated in (10b), Spanish permits null subjects, butthese null subjects cannot have sloppy interpretation: (10b) only means that Juan believes that
Maria’s proposal will be accepted, and it never means that Juan believes that Juan’s proposal
will be accepted. In the English example (11), which contains a verb that optionally allows a
missing object, the second clause simply means that John did some eating activity, and neverpermits sloppy reading.
(10) Spanish (Oku 1998: 305):a.
Maria cree
[ queMaria believes
that

su propuesta
her proposal

será
will-beaceptada ] y
accepted
andMaria1 believes that her1 proposal will be accepted and …’b.

Juan también cree
[ queJuan toobelievesthat

será
will-beaceptada ].
accepted‘Juan2 also believes that her1 proposal will be accepted.’* ‘Juan2 also believes that his2 proposal will be accepted.’(11) English (Oku 1998: 311):
Bill1 ate his1 shoe, and John ate, too.
To account for the cross-linguistic difference between Japanese on one hand and English
2

See also Takahashi (2007) for a detailed cross-linguistic survey concerning the availability ofargument ellipsis.

- 66 -A Constraint on Argument Ellipsis in Child Japanese (K. Sugisaki)

and Spanish on the other, Saito (2007) built on Kuroda’s (1998) proposal that the main sourceof the various differences between English and Japanese is the presence vs. absence ofobligatory agreement, and proposed that argument ellipsis in Japanese stems from theabsence of overt agreement in this language. According to Chomsky (2000), agreement is aprobe-goal relation induced by a set of uninterpretable φ-features on the functional heads of T
and v. In the case of object agreement illustrated in (12), the uninterpretable φ-features of v
agree with the matching, interpretable φ-set of the object DP. The object satisfies thecondition that the goal must have an uninterpretable Case feature (the Activation Condition),and hence qualifies as a goal. The agreement relation results in the deletion of theuninterpretable φ-features on v and the uninterpretable Case feature of the DP.
(12) a.
b.

… [vP
… [vP

v{uφ}
v{uφ}

[VP
[VP

V
V

DP{iφ, uCase} ] ]DP{iφ, uCase} ] ]Saito (2007) argues that the agreement relation illustrated above is obligatory inlanguages like English and Spanish, and that this obligatory nature of agreement excludes
argument ellipsis from these languages. For example, the derivation of the English examples
in (13) proceeds as shown in (14). The object DP his friend in (13a) must be copied into theobject position of (13b) for the latter sentence to be properly interpreted. If we assume that
only LF objects can be employed in LF-copying, the DP his friend must be copied into (13b)from the LF representation of (13a).3 However, this DP has already agreed with its v in (13a),and hence the uninterpretable Case feature that rendered this DP active has already been
deleted. Then, given the Activation Condition, it does not qualify as a goal in the required
agree relation in (13b), and consequently, the derivation crashes due to the remaining
uninterpretable φ-features of v.
(13) a.
John brought [DP his friend].
b. * But Bill did not bring.

(14) Derivation:a.
In Overt Syntax:

John

Agree
[vP v{uφ}brought[DP his friend{iφ, uCase}]

].

John

[vP v{uφ}brought[DP his friend{iφ, uCase}]

].

bring

Copy
[DP his friend{iφ, uCase}] ].

b.

At LF:c.

Agree
In Overt Syntax: Bill did not [vP v{uφ}The corresponding derivation converges in Japanese, however, given that Japanese lacks
overt agreement, which, according to Saito (2007), indicates that the uninterpretable φfeatures on T and v are optional in this language. The derivation of the Japanese examples in(15) proceeds as shown in (16). In (15), the object DP zibun-no tomodati ‘self’s friend’ is3

See Saito (2007) for evidence that only LF objects can be employed in the LF-copying operation
involved in argument ellipsis.

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Nanzan Linguistics 7: Research Results and Activities 2010 ~ 2011

copied from the LF representation of (15a) into the object position of (15b), as in (16c). Since
φ-features on a functional head are optional, the v in (15b) need not have uninterpretable φfeatures. Thus, the object DP in (15a) can be successfully copied into (15b) even though its
uninterpretable Case feature has already been deleted, and the derivation converges.
(15) a.

John-wa
John-TOP[DP zibun-no
self-GEN

tomodati-o ]friend-ACC

turetekita.
brought‘John1 brought his1 friend.’
b.

Demo
but

Mary-wa
Mary-TOP

tureteko-nakatta.
brought-not‘But Mary2 did not bring her2 friend.’(16) Derivation:a.
In Overt Syntax:
Agree
John-wa[vP [DP zibun-no tomodati-o{iφ, uCase} ] turetekita
John-TOP
self-GEN friend-ACC
broughtb.

c.

At LF:
John-wa[vP [DP zibun-no tomodati-o{iφ, uCase} ] turetekita
John-TOP
self-GEN friend-ACC
broughtv{uφ} ].

v{uφ} ].

In Overt Syntax:
Copy
Mary-wa [vP [DP zibun-no tomodati-o{iφ, uCase} ] tureteko-nakatta v{…} ].
Mary-TOP
self-GEN friend-ACC
brought-not

To summarize this section, Saito’s (2007) “anti-agreement” approach attributes the
cross-linguistic variation in the availability of argument ellipsis to a more prominent property
that is also subject to variation, namely the presence vs. absence of obligatory agreement.4
4. A Consequence of the Anti-agreement Approach to Argument Ellipsis
An immediate consequence of the anti-agreement approach proposed by Saito (2007)
would be that if a certain type of phrase must undergo obligatory agreement, then that type ofphrases cannot be elliptic even in Japanese. I argue that this expectation is indeed borne out
by wh-phrases.
Chomsky (2000) analyzes wh-movement in English as follows. A wh-phrase has anuninterpretable feature {uWh} and an interpretable feature {iQ}. The former activates the whphrase for agreement and movement, and the latter matches and agrees with the4

See Şener and Takahashi (2009) for evidence from Turkish for the anti-agreement approach. See
Oku (1998), Saito (2003), and Takahashi (2008) for a different approach, which relates the availabilityof argument ellipsis in Japanese to the existence of scrambling.

- 68 -A Constraint on Argument Ellipsis in Child Japanese (K. Sugisaki)

uninterpretable feature {uQ} of an interrogative complementizer.
Agree(17) John knows [CPC{uQ} [TP Mary boughtwhat{iQ, uWh} ] ]MoveDeveloping the proposals by Watanabe (1992) and Hagstrom (1998), Chomsky suggests
the possibility that wh-in-situ constructions also involve an agreement relation as illustrated in(18): The difference between wh-movement and wh-in-situ languages lies in whether theentire wh-phrase is moved (as in English), or only the head undergoes movement overtly or
covertly (as in Japanese).5(18) John-wa [CP Mary-ga
John-TOP
Mary-NOM

nani-o{iQ, uWh}
what-ACC

katta
boughtAgreeka{uQ}] sitteiru.
Q
know‘John knows what Mary bought.’
The obligatory agreement relation between a wh-phrase and an interrogativecomplementizer provides a very simple account for the observation that argument ellipsis of
wh-phrases is not permitted, as illustrated in (3) (which is repeated here as (19)).
(19) a.

Speaker A:

John-wa
nani-otabeta no?
John-TOP what-ACC ate
Q

Speaker B: Ringo.
apple‘What did John eat?’b.

Speaker A:

Dewa, Mary-wa
then Mary-TOP‘An apple.’tabeta no?
ate
Q‘Then, did Mary eat something/that?’ / *‘Then, what did Mary eat?’
The relevant derivation proceeds as shown in (20). The object wh-phrase nani-o ‘what’ iscopied from the LF representation of (19a) into the object position of (19b), as in (20c).
However, this wh-phrase has already agreed with the complementizer in (19a), and hence theuninterpretable feature {uWh} that rendered this wh-phrase active has already been deleted.
Then, given the Activation Condition, the copied wh-phrase does not qualify as a goal in therequired agreement relation, and consequently, the derivation involving LF-copying of a whphrase does not converge due to the remaining uninterpretable feature {uQ} of thecomplementizer.

5

Watanabe (1992) argues that a null operator undergoes overt movement in Japanese wh-in-situ
constructions, while in Hagstrom’s (1998) analysis, it is the question particle (ka) that undergoes
syntactic movement from a clause-internal position (by the wh-word) to the clause periphery.

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Nanzan Linguistics 7: Research Results and Activities 2010 ~ 2011(20) Derivation:a.
In Overt Syntax:b.

At LF:c.

In Overt Syntax:

John-wa[DP nani-o{iQ, uWh} ]John-TOP
what-ACC

tabetaate

John-wa[DP nani-o{iQ, uWh} ]John-TOP
what-ACC
Copy
Mary-wa [DP nani-o{iQ, uWh} ]Mary-TOP
what-ACC

tabetaatetabetaate

Agreeno{uQ} ?
Q
no{uQ} ?
Q
Agree
no{uQ} ?
Q

What the above discussion shows is that the absence of wh-phrase ellipsis follows from
Saito’s (2007) anti-agreement approach without any additional cost, if we adopt Chomsky’s(2000) assumption that wh-phrases must undergo agreement with an interrogativecomplementizer even in wh-in-situ languages like Japanese. I must hasten to add thefollowing: I do not claim that the derivation in (20) would be the only source for the lack ofwh-phrase ellipsis. Another possible (and plausible) account for this observation is easily
available: A wh-phrase is inherently focused, and a focused material cannot be subject toellipsis. What I argue here is that the anti-agreement approach provides an additional way to
exclude ellipsis of wh-phrases in Japanese, and that the relevant mechanisms automaticallyfollow from (independently motivated) properties of UG. A virtue of deriving the ban on
eliding wh-phrases from the anti-agreement approach is that we can obtain a clear prediction
for children’s knowledge about this constraint: Since the obligatory agreement relation
between a wh-phrase and an interrogative complementizer directly follows from UG, it ispredicted that those Japanese-speaking preschool children who already have the knowledge
about argument ellipsis should also have the knowledge that wh-phrases cannot undergo thistype of ellipsis. In order to evaluate this prediction, the next section summarizes my own
previous study that investigated whether argument ellipsis is in the grammar of Japanesespeaking children, and Section 6 reports the results of a new experiment which examinedchildren’s knowledge about the ban on eliding wh-phrases.
5. Argument Ellipsis in Child Japanese: A Previous Study
Let us recall that Saito’s (2007) anti-agreement approach attributes the availability ofargument ellipsis in Japanese to a more prominent property of this language, namely theabsence of overt agreement. Previous acquisition literature reports that agreement is acquired
fairly early, at least by the age of three. A detailed study by Hyams (2002) summarizes theresults of various acquisition studies, and observes that children acquiring “rich” agreement
languages such as Italian and Catalan obey the subject-verb agreement requirement from theearliest stage (before or around the age of two), even before they produce all the forms in theparadigm. For example, singular verb morphology is typically acquired before pluralmorphology, and first- and third-person forms appear earlier than second-person forms.
Nevertheless, agreement is almost always correct for those forms that are used. As
summarized in Table 1, across children and languages, agreement errors are under 4%. Given- 70 -A Constraint on Argument Ellipsis in Child Japanese (K. Sugisaki)

the finding that agreement errors are extremely rare in the acquisition of “rich” agreement
languages, we can reasonably speculate that children acquiring agreementless languages like
Japanese would also be sensitive to the absence of overt agreement from the early stages ofacquisition.
Child

LanguageAgen% error

SourceSimoneMartina
Diana
Guglielmo
Claudia
Francesco
Marco
Marti
Josep
GiselaGermanItalianItalianItalianItalianItalianItalianCatalan/Spanish
Catalan/Spanish
Catalan

1;07-2;08
1;08-2;07
1;10-2;06
2;02-2;07
1;04-2;04
1;05-2;10
1;05-3;00
1;09-2;05
1;09-2;06
1;10-2;06

1732
478
610
201
1410
1264
415
178
136
81

1
1.6
1.5
3.3
3
2
4
0.56
3
1.2

GuillemCatalan

1;09-2;06

129

2.3 Torrens 1992

Clahsen and Penke 1992
Guasti 1994
Guasti 1994
Guasti 1994
Pizzuto and Caselli 1992
Pizzuto and Caselli 1992
Pizzuto and Caselli 1992
Torrens 1992
Torrens 1992
Torrens 1992

Table 1: Percentage of Subject-Verb Agreement Errors in Early Language (Hyams 2002:231)
Since we have reasons to believe that the property that is allegedly connected toargument ellipsis is acquired early, the parametric proposal by Saito (2007) should make thefollowing prediction:(21) Prediction for Child Japanese:
Japanese-speaking preschool children have knowledge of argument ellipsis.
Sugisaki (2007) evaluated this prediction by conducting an experiment with ten
Japanese-speaking preschool children, ranging in age from 3(years);01(month) to 5;07 (meanage 4;05).6 The experiment examined children’s interpretation of sentences involving null
objects, by using a modified version of the Truth-Value Judgment Task (Crain and Thornton
1998).7 In this task, each child was told a story, which was accompanied by a series ofpictures presented on a laptop computer. At the end of each story, a puppet described verballywhat he thought had happened in the story. The task for the child was to judge whether thepuppet’s description was true or false, by feeding him either a nice strawberry or a horrible
green pepper. The experiment contained (i) two sentences with null objects, and (ii) two
sentences with overt pronouns, in order to determine whether children allow the sloppy
interpretation for null objects while disallowing this interpretation for overt pronouns. A
sample story and the test sentences that followed it are presented in (22) and (23).
6

See also Otaki and Yusa (2009, in press) for evaluation of the prediction in (21).

7

See also Matsuo (2007) for a related study which investigated Japanese-speaking children’sinterpretation of null-object sentences.

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Nanzan Linguistics 7: Research Results and Activities 2010 ~ 2011(22) A Sample Story:
Today, Panda and Pig enjoyed riding on their favorite tricycles. Now they decided towash them. Panda said, “Oh! My tricycle is very dirty.” Pig said, “Shall I help you wash
your tricycle?” Panda replied, “No, thanks. I will try to do it by myself, so you can workon your own.” They started washing their favorite tricycles.

(23) Sample Test Sentences:a.
Pandasan-ga zibun-no
Panda-NOM self-GEN

sanrinsya-otricycle-ACC

aratteru
washingyo.
EXCL

aratteru
washingyo.
EXCL‘Panda1 is washing his1 tricycle.’b.

Butasan-mo
Pig-also/ sore-oit-ACC‘Pig is also washing/ it.’The results are summarized in Table 2. The obtained results clearly indicate thatJapanese-speaking preschool children permit the sloppy-identity interpretation for null-object
sentences, which in turn suggests that the knowledge of argument ellipsis is already in theirgrammar. This finding is consistent with the parametric proposal by Saito (2007) that UG isequipped with a parameter that relates the availability of argument ellipsis in Japanese with amore prominent characteristic of this language, namely the absence of agreement.
Sloppy-identity Interpretation of Null Objects

90% acceptance (18/20)

Sloppy-identity Interpretation of Overt Pronouns

85% rejection (17/20)

Table 2: Summary of Sugisaki’s (2007) Results
6. A Constraint on Argument Ellipsis in Child Japanese: A New Experiment
In the previous section, we have established that the knowledge of argument ellipsis isalready in the grammar of Japanese-speaking preschool children. We have also seen in
Section 4 that if we adopt the anti-agreement approach to argument ellipsis, the ban on
eliding wh-phrases should follow from the properties of UG that underlie the obligatory
agreement relation between an interrogative complementizer and a wh-phrase. These
considerations lead to the prediction for acquisition given in (24).

- 72 -A Constraint on Argument Ellipsis in Child Japanese (K. Sugisaki)(24) Prediction for Child Japanese:
Japanese-speaking preschool children have the knowledge about the constraint that whphrases cannot undergo argument ellipsis
In order to evaluate the prediction in (24), an experiment was conducted with 16
Japanese-speaking preschool children, ranging in age from 3;09 to 4;07 (mean age: 4;01). The
task for children was Question-after-Story. In this task, each child was told a short story,
which was accompanied by a series of pictures presented on a laptop computer. At the end ofeach story, a puppet appeared on the screen and asked the child two questions with respect towhat had happened in the story. The task for the child was to answer these questions. All thetest questions were pre-recorded and came out from the laptop computer.
A sample story is presented in (25).
(25) A Sample Story:
Duck and Squirrel are playing with their favorite toys. Duck now starts to draw his
favorite airplane. Since Squirrel is not good at drawing, he thinks of just taking a look at
how well Duck draws the airplane. However, by looking at Duck’s drawing, Squirrel
now wants to give a try. So Squirrel also starts to draw his favorite train.

Each story was followed by two questions. The first question was always a wh-question
like (26). The second question, which was posed after a child had answered the first one, wasof three types: (i) a wh-question as in (27a), (ii) a question involving a null object as in (27b),and (iii) a truncated question as in (27c). In adult Japanese, the questions in (27a) and (27c)are interpreted as a wh-question (and hence requires a short answer “A train”), while thequestion with a null object in (27b) is interpreted as a yes/no question.8(26) The First Question: Ahirusan-wa
Duck-TOP

nani-owhat-Acc

kaita
draw

kana?
Q

‘What did Duck draw?’

8

The truncated question in (27c) is interpreted as a wh-question since the preceding question (26) isalso a wh-question: It can be interpreted as a yes/no question when the preceding question is a yes/noquestion.

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Nanzan Linguistics 7: Research Results and Activities 2010 ~ 2011(27) The Second Question:a.
Wh-question:

Jaa,
then

Risusan-wa nani-oSquirrel-TOP what-Acc

kaita kana?
draw Q‘Then, what did Squirrel draw?’b.

Question with a null object:

Jaa,
then

Risusan-wa
Squirrel-TOP

kaita kana?
draw Q‘Then, did Squirrel draw (something)?’c.

Truncated question:

Jaa,
then

Risusan-wa?
Squirrel-TOP‘Then, Squirrel?’
One might worry that some intonational difference between a null-object question like(27b) and a wh-question as in (27a) may play a role for children to conclude that the former is
not a wh-question but a yes/no question. In order to make sure that there should be no crucial
intonational difference between these two types of questions (other than the presence of a whphrase), the null-object questions were created from the corresponding wh-questions bydeleting the sound corresponding the wh-phrase, using Praat (Boersma and Weenink 2010).
Truncated questions like (27c) were added to exclude the possibility that children always
provide a yes/no answer to questions without an overt wh-phrase: If it can be shown thatchildren interpret questions with a null object like (27b) as a yes/no question despite the factthat they interpret truncated questions like (27c) as a wh-question, then this would allow us toconclude that children do not determine the interpretation of a question based on the presenceor the absence of a wh-phrase.
The experiment consisted of two trials with a wh-question as in (27a), two trials with anull-object question as in (27b), and two trials with a truncated question as in (27c). The orderof presentation was pseudo-randomized.
The results are summarized in Table 3.
Interpreted asa wh-question

Interpreted asa yes/no question

Wh-questions as in (27a)

100% (32/32)

0% (0/32)

Questions with a null object as in (27b)6.25% (2/32)

93.75% (30/32)

Truncated questions as in (27c)96.88% (31/32)

0% (0/32)

Table 3: Summary of Children’s Responses
Except for the responses from a single child (4;04), all the answers to null-object
questions were yes/no answers (more specifically, yes answers). In contrast, virtually all the- 74 -A Constraint on Argument Ellipsis in Child Japanese (K. Sugisaki)

answers to truncated questions were short answers such as “A train”, which suggests thatchildren interpreted these sentences as wh-questions. This finding suggests that Japanesespeaking children do not have a strategy of interpreting questions without a wh-phrase as
yes/no questions. The sharp contrast between responses to questions involving a null object
and responses to truncated questions suggests that children do not interpret null-object
questions as object wh-questions. Thus, the obtained results clearly indicate that Japanesespeaking preschool children already have the knowledge that wh-phrases are not allowed toundergo argument ellipsis.
7. Conclusion
This study demonstrated experimentally that Japanese-speaking preschool children
already have the knowledge that argument ellipsis does not apply to wh-phrases. The resultsof this study, combined with the results of my own previous study (Sugisaki 2007), suggestthat not only the knowledge about argument ellipsis but also the knowledge about its
constraints are in children’s grammar from the earliest observable stages. These findings are
consistent with the view that the availability of argument ellipsis and its constraints directly
follow from principles and parameters of UG.

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