Adjunct Ellipsis in Korean

This paper explores phrasal and clausal adjunct ellipsis observed in inter-sentential contexts in Korean. Close examination of an array of empirical facts reveals that adjunct ellipsis is widely attested in Korean and Japanese (cf. Oku 2016). Crucially, we look into ellipsis of a variety of adjunct phrases such as instrumental, locative and manner phrases. We then probe the ellipsis of adjunct clauses including causal, concessional, conditional and temporal clauses, paying close attention to mismatches in functional categories between the antecedent and the elided clause. In line with Lee’s (2014) claim that argument ellipsis is licensed as long as the lexical cores are identical, this empirical finding demonstrates that clausal adjunct ellipsis can be licensed despite functional mismatches between the antecedent and the unuttered clause. This further suggests that functional peripheries do not count in the computation of identity for ellipsis (cf. Lee and Park 2019). PF deletion is proposed as an account of the unrealized, understood adjunct clause.