On Missing Objects: Model-Interpretive Anaphora or Ellipsis

This paper examines the phenomena of missing objects in Korean, given linguistic or situational contexts. It is argued that the null object construction in Korean is model-interpretive anaphora in terms of Sag and Hankamer’s (1984) dichotomy of anaphora as model-interpretive anaphora or ellipsis. Instead of a DP ellipsis analysis, a pro analysis of null object constructions is thus defended. To be specific, the concept of sloppy readings in anaphora is articulated along the line of Hoji (2003): personal pronouns [+β] vs. names [+α]. As a consequence, it is confirmed that there is neither DP ellipsis nor CP ellipsis in Korean.