On the deletion of accusative case markers in Japanese

The Japanese accusative case marker o cannot be deleted arbitrarily; rather, it seems that the deletion of o, that is, the use of ZERO, is governed by certain factors. For some languages, it is claimed that both animacy and definiteness play an important role in the accusative case marking system. For example, NPs that are low in animacy and definiteness tend to drop accusative markers. The purpose of the present paper is to show that NPs with ZERO are low in both animacy and definiteness in Japanese.