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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 25, No. 0, pp.1690-1703
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2025
Received 11 Sep 2025 Revised 15 Dec 2025 Accepted 18 Dec 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.25..202512.1690

Case and Failed Sprouting in Extraction out of Elided VP

Myung-Kwan Park ; Jihyun Kim
(First author) Professor, Division of English Language and Literature, Dongguk University parkmk@dongguk.edu
(Corresponding author) Lecturer, Department of English Education, Korea University jihyunkim@korea.ac.kr


© 2025 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper examines the distribution and licensing of sprouting, a type of ellipsis where a remnant lacks an overt antecedent. We begin by reviewing the analysis of Overfelt (2024), who observed a fundamental asymmetry: sprouting is licensed in clausal ellipses (e.g., sluicing and stripping) but is systematically excluded in predicate ellipses (e.g., VP ellipsis and Pseudogapping). Overfelt’s account attributes this to distinct antecedent recovery mechanisms, positing that clausal ellipses can access discourse-level antecedents via the Question Under Discussion (QUD), whereas predicate ellipses are restricted to syntactic antecedents. We then present a crucial refinement to this generalization based on the findings of Orth & Yoshida (2025). Their work demonstrates that predicate ellipses are not uniform, as sprouting is systematically excluded in Verbal Gapping but is possible with PP remnants in Pseudogapping. However, their account leaves a critical open problem: it cannot explain why DP sprouting remains uniformly ungrammatical in Pseudogapping. To explain this more detailed pattern, we advance a Case-theoretic analysis. Our account proposes that implicit DP arguments cannot sprout because they are Case-licensed inside the VP, preventing them from undergoing the necessary movement for ellipsis licensing. In contrast, implicit PP arguments originate outside the VP in an applicative projection, allowing the VP to serve as a valid ellipsis site and thereby permitting PP sprouting in Pseudogapping. This approach provides a principled explanation for the DP/PP asymmetry in Pseudogapping.

Keywords:

Sprouting, clausal and predicate ellipsis, gapping and pseudogapping, case licensing

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