This paper investigates Particle Stranding Ellipsis (PSE) in Japanese. We first tackle the question of whether PSE is an instance of ellipsis or proforms, showing that it is an instance of the former on the basis of the observations that PSE requires an overt linguistic antecedent and that covert possessor extraction is possible out of a PSE site. Then, we provide the hitherto unnoticed data on the interaction between PSE and the split QP phenomenon, taking them to indicate that PSE is best analyzed in terms of LF-copying, not PF-deletion.