Ellipsis of case-markers and information structure in Japanese

Abstract

This paper presents an HPSG formalisation of how the ellipsis of case-marking affects the focus of the clause in Japanese. We restrict our attention to the nominative and accusative markers ga and o, and in view of the fact that the ellipsis effects on focushood vary between 1) ga and o and 2) different argument structures of the head verb, develop an essentially lexicalist account that combines both aspects, in which the implicit focus argument position is specified in the predicate. We argue that if a constituent is an implicit focus it does not, while if one is not it does, require a case-marker to be focused.