Resolving ‘incognito’ ellipsis: treatment for constructions that disguise ellipsis

This paper raises a neglected issue in the study of ellipsis resolution. The existence of ellipsis under certain constructions is often disguised due to the structure that assigns the nominative marking to what is typically the object. This kind of ellipsis deserves attention in view of the fact that its referent is the agent of the sentence and that these constructions are observed in diverse languages. A problem is posed by virtue of the fact that English is not one of those languages, and it overtly expresses the referent of ellipsis that is implicit in those languages that use those constructions. Hence, the recognition and resolution of such ellipses is of importance particularly in machine translation systems that translate sentences with “incognito ellipsis” from those languages into English. After presenting the types of constructions, the paper explicates the mechanisms that govern the constructions in Japanese, and proposes a method to resolve such incognito ellipses along with common ellipses in a unified manner.