Apparent parasitic gaps and null arguments in Japanese

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, it aims to point out that though what appear to be parasitic gaps exist in Japanese, they behave differently from their English counterpart in crucial ways; second, it argues that the existence of those apparent parasitic gaps in Japanese is closely related to the possibility of null arguments in the language. The argument crucially relies on the proposal, independently made in the literature, that certain cases of null arguments involve ellipsis rather than empty pronouns.