Verb echo answers and ellipsis operations: A reply to Sato and Hayashi (2018)

Abstract

Recent research suggests that verb echo answers (VEAs) to a polar question in Japanese are derived by sluicing: the V head moves to C, and the complement of C, TP, undergoes deletion, stranding the verbal complex in C. Two pieces of evidence are provided for the view: adjunct inclusive interpretation and voice mismatch, neither of which is conclusive, as shown here. One consequence of the sluicing analysis is that VEAs reverse scope. We show that the semantic shift has nothing to do with the scope reversal. Our conclusion is that VEAs are unambiguously derived by multiple applications of argument ellipsis. We also advance an alternative explanation of the obligatory wide scope for focus phrases.