Null object (NO) constructions in Korean and Japanese have received different accounts: as (a) argument ellipsis (Oku 1998, S. Kim 1999, Saito 2007, Sakamoto 2015), (b) VP-ellipsis after verb raising (Otani and Whitman 1991, Funakoshi 2016), or (c) instances of base-generated pro (Park 1997, Hoji 1998, 2003). We report results from two experiments supporting the argument ellipsis analysis for Korean. Experiment 1 builds on K.-M. Kim and Han’s (2016) finding of interspeaker variation in whether the pronoun ku can be bound by a quantifier. Results showed that a speaker’s acceptance of quantifier-bound ku positively correlates with acceptance of sloppy readings in NO sentences. We argue that an ellipsis account, in which the NO site contains internal structure hosting the pronoun, accounts for this correlation. Experiment 2, testing the recovery of adverbials in NO sentences, showed that only the object (not the adverb) can be recovered in the NO site, excluding the possibility of VP-ellipsis. Taken together, our findings suggest that NOs result from argument ellipsis in Korean.

中文翻译：

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朝鲜语中的空对象：参数省略号分析的实验证据

韩语和日语的空对象（NO）构造收到了不同的解释：（a）自变量省略号（Oku 1998，S. Kim 1999，Saito 2007，Sakamoto 2015），（b）动词加法后的VP省略号（Otani和Whitman 1991，Funakoshi 2016），或（c）基本生成的pro实例（Park 1997，Hoji 1998,2003）。我们报告了来自支持韩文省略号分析的两个实验的结果。实验1建立在K.-M. 金和汉（Kim and Han，2016）发现代词ku是否可以被量词所束缚，从而发现了说话人之间的差异。结果表明，说话者对量词约束的ku的接受与NO句子中草率的阅读的接受呈正相关。我们认为，省略号帐户（其中NO站点包含代词的内部结构）解释了这种相关性。实验2 测试NO​​句子中副词的恢复，结果表明只有对象（不是副词）可以在NO位置恢复，不包括VP省略号。综上所述，我们的发现表明，否定词是由韩语中的省略号引起的。