Notes on Extraction from Missing CPs

It is noted that scrambling is impossible from argument ellipsis sites. This supports the claim that argument ellipsis does not have a full-fledged structure and that it involves pro. Pro analyses of missing arguments are in line with Hankamer and Sag’s (1976) main idea on deep anaphora. Deep anaphoras do not have internal structures. Whether anaphora sites involve internal structures has been debated for a long time. Recently, Sakamoto (2017) and Takahashi (2020) suggest that there are cleft examples showing that extraction seems to be possible from argument ellipsis sites. This squib examines whether the cleft examples in Korean involve movement from argument ellipsis sites. We suggest that the clefting examples in Korean pointed out by Sakamoto (2017) don’t involve movement from a hidden clause structure and that an LF copying strategy is not needed to account for the interpretation of the examples. We note that an adjunct reading construed with an embedded predicate is absent in Korean adjunct clefting. We suggest that the absence of such an interpretation indicates that LF copying does not occur in argument ellipsis sites.