Multiple Argument Ellipsis and the Universal Uniqueness Principle

This paper is concerned with a peculiar asymmetry between single and multiple argument ellipsis in Japanese: ellipsis of a single argument is sensitive to syntactic constraints and LF interpretive effects, whereas multiple argument ellipsis is not. We point out that argument ellipsis and topicalization are parallel in this respect: while single topicalization obeys syntactic constraints and exhibits LF interpretive effects, multiple topicalization does not. Following Agbayani and Ishii’s (2023) proposal that multiple topicalization involves prosodic topicalization at PF, we argue that while single argument ellipsis involves syntactic topicalization followed by topic deletion (Fujiwara, 2020, 2022; Mizuno, 2025), multiple argument ellipsis involves prosodic topicalization. We then propose the Universal Uniqueness Principle, which enforces “uniqueness” for any application of movement, and demonstrate that this principle, coupled with the Earliness Principle (Pesetsky, 1989), accounts for asymmetries with single and multiple argument ellipsis/topicalization in relation to the levels where topicalization occurs. We argue that cross-linguistic differences in “uniqueness” phenomena result from different properties of the syntax–prosody mapping, not from a “uniqueness” macro-parameter (Fukui, 1999), providing support for the Uniformity Hypothesis (Chomsky, 2001) and the Externalization Parameter (Chomsky, 2010; Berwick & Chomsky, 2011).