Fragments and Ellipsis

• Published in: Linguistics and philosophy Vol. 27; no. 6; pp. 661 - 738
• Main Author: Merchant, Jason
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Heidelberg Kluwer Academic Publishers 01.12.2004; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anaphora; Antecedents; Barriers; Descriptive studies and applied theories; Ellipses; Ellipsis; Grammatical clauses; Linguistics; Merchants; Movement; Phonetic form; Pronouns; Question Answer Sequences; Sentence Structure; Syntactic models; Syntactic movement; Syntactic Structures; Syntactics; Syntax; Syntax Phonology Relationship; Theoretical linguistics; Syntactic island; Ellipsis; Semantic interpretation; Movement transformation; Generative syntax; Sentence member
• ISSN: 0165-0157; 1573-0549
• DOI: 10.1007/s10988-005-7378-3

Fragmentary utterances such as 'short' answers and subsentential XPs without linguistic antecedents are proposed to have fully sentential syntactic structures, subject to ellipsis. Ellipsis in these cases is preceded by A′-movement of the fragment to a clause-peripheral position; the combination of movement and ellipsis accounts for a wide range of connectivity and anti-connectivity effects in these structures. Fragment answers furthermore shed light on the nature of islands, and contrast with sluicing in triggering island effects; this is shown to follow from an articulated syntax and the PF theory of islands. Fragments without linguistic antecedents are argued to be compatible with an ellipsis analysis, and do not support direct interpretation approaches to these phenomena.