Verb‐Echo Answers Do Not Involve Head Movement in Japanese

This article discusses how verb‐echo answers in Japanese are derived. By critically reviewing the head movement analysis of Japanese verb‐echo answers proposed in the recent literature, an alternative argument ellipsis analysis for such phenomena is laid out. Various characteristics of Japanese verb‐echo answers, such as the impossibility of voice mismatches, availability of adjunct inclusive reading, and scope relations between negation and disjunction, are shown not to be evidence for the head movement analysis; some of them even undermine it. The present article presents an alternative way of analyzing them in terms of argument ellipsis armed with Gricean reasoning.