Sluicing cannot apply in-situ in Japanese

Abstract

Ross (1969) proposed that sluicing in English is derived by wh- movement and deletion. The wh-movement analysis, however, is not straight- forward in wh-in-situ languages like Japanese. A number of studies argued that sluicing in Japanese is based on wh-cleft structure with much empirical evidence. More recently, however, Kimura (2010) and Abe (2015) have proposed an in-situ analysis of sluicing in Japanese, which deletes everything but a wh-phrase (and the Q-complementizer) in situ, without movement. In this paper, building on immobile elements, I will provide decisive evidence against the in-situ deletion analysis of sluicing and for the wh-cleft analysis of sluicing.