Abstract
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.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anagnostopoulou, Elena: 1994, Clitic Dependencies in Modern Greek, PhD thesis, University of Salzburg.
Elena Anagnostopoulou Henk Riemsdijk Particlevan Frans Zwarts (Eds) (1997) Materials on Left Dislocation John Benjamins Amsterdam
Joseph Aoun Elabbas Benmamoun (1998) ArticleTitleMinimality, Reconstruction, and PF Movement Linguistic Inquiry 29 569–597
Ellen Barton (1990) Nonsentential Constituents John Benjamins Amsterdam
Ellen Barton (1998) ArticleTitleThe Grammar of Telegraphic Structures: Sentential and Nonsentential Derivation Journal of English Linguistics 26 37–67
Barton, Ellen, and Ljiljiana Progovac: to appear, ‘Nonsententials in Minimalism’, in Reinaldo Elugardo and Robert Stainton (eds.), Ellipsis and Non-sentential Speech, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
Željko Bošković (2001) On the Nature of the Syntax-phonology Interface: Cliticization and Related Phenomena Elsevier Amsterdam
Željko Bošković (2002) ArticleTitleOn Multiple wh-fronting Linguistic Inquiry 33 351–383
Brunetti, Lisa: 2003a, A Unification of Focus, PhD thesis, University of Florence.
Lisa Brunetti (2003) Information” Focus Movement in Italian and Contextua Constraints on Ellipsis Proceedings of 22nd West Conference on Formal Linguistics Cascadilla Press Somerville, MA 95–108
Karl Bühler (1934) Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache Fischer Jena
Robyn Carston (2002) ArticleTitleLinguistic Meaning, Communicated Meaning and Cognitive Pragmatics Mind and Language 17 127–148
Wynn Chao (1987) On Ellipsis University of Massachusetts Amherst
Noam Chomsky (1972) Some Empirical Issues in the Theory of Transformational Grammar Stanley Peters (Eds) The Goals of Linguistic Theory Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs, NJ 63–130
Noam Chomsky (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding Foris Dordrecht
Noam Chomsky Howard Lasnik (1993) The Theory of Principles and Parameters Joachim Jacobs Arnim Stechow Particlevon Wolfgang Sternefeld Theo Vennemann (Eds) Syntax: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research De Gruyter Berlin 506–569
Sandra Chung William Ladusaw James McCloskey (1995) ArticleTitleSluicing and Logical Form Natural Language Semantics 3 239–282
Guglielmo Cinque (1990) Types of A′-dependencies MIT Press Cambridge, MA
Marcel Dikken Particleden André Meinunger Chris Wilder (2000) ArticleTitlePseudoclefts and Ellipsis Studia Linguistica 54 49–89
David Dowty (1979) Word Meaning and Montague Grammar D. Reidel Dordrecht
Elugardo, Reinaldo and Robert Stainton: to appear, ‘Shorthand, Syntactic Ellipsis, and the Pragmatic Determinants of what is Said: Critical Reflections on Stanley’s “Context and Logical Form” ’, Mind and Language.
Robert Fiengo Robert May (1994) Indices and Identity MIT Press Cambridge, MA
Robert Fiengo C.-T. James Huang Howard Lasnik Tanya Reinhart (1988) The syntax of wh-in situ Hagit Borer (Eds) Proceedings of 7th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics Center for the Study of Language and Information Stanford 81–98
Elissa Flagg (2001) You” Can’t Say That: Restrictions on Overt Subjects in the English Imperative Adronis Mary Ball Chris Elston Heidi Sylvain Neuvel (Eds) Proceedings from the Main Session of the 37th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago, IL 161–173
Danny Fox (1999) ArticleTitleReconstruction, Binding Theory, and the Interpretation of Chains Linguistic Inquiry 30 157–196
Danny Fox Howard Lasnik (2003) ArticleTitleSuccessive-cyclic Movement and Island Repair: The Difference between Sluicing and VP-ellipsis Linguistic Inquiry 34 143–154
Fukaya, Teruhiko: 2002, ‘Sluicing and Strip** in Japanese’, Ms., University of Southern California.
Teruhiko Fukaya Hajime Hoji (1999) Strip** and Sluicing in Japanese and Some Implications S. Bird A. Carnie J. Haugen P. Norquest (Eds) Proceedings of the 18th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics Cascadilla Press Somerville, MA 145–158
Anastasia Giannakidou (1998) Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)veridical Dependency John Benjamins Amsterdam
Anastasia Giannakidou (2000) ArticleTitleNegative ... Concord? Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18 457–523
Ginzburg, Jonathan: 1992, ‘Questions, Queries and Facts: A Semantics and Pragmatics for Interrogatives’, PhD thesis, Stanford University.
Jonathan Ginzburg (1999) Ellipsis Resolution with Syntactic Presuppositions H. Bunt R. Muskens (Eds) Computing Meaning: Current Issues in Computational Semantics Kluwer Academic Publishers Dordrecht
Jonathan Ginzburg Ivan Sag (2000) Interrogative Investigations: The Form, Meaning, and Use of English Interrogatives Center for the Study of Language and Information Stanford, CA
Günther Grewendorf (2001) ArticleTitleMultiple wh-fronting Linguistic Inquiry 32 87–122
Kleanthes Grohmann (2003) Prolific Domains. On the Anti-locality of Movement Dependencies John Benjamins Amsterdam
Jorge Hankamer (1973) ArticleTitleUnacceptable Ambiguity Linguistic Inquiry 4 17–68
Jorge Hankamer (1978) ArticleTitleOn the Nontransformational Derivation of Some Null VP Anaphors Linguistic Inquiry 9 66–74
Hankamer, Jorge: 1979, Deletion in Coordinate Structures, Garland, New York. (PhD thesis, Yale University, 1971.)
Jorge Hankamer Sag Ivan (1976) ArticleTitleDeep and Surface Anaphora Linguistic Inquiry 7 391–428
Katharina Hartmann (2000) Right Node Raising and Gap**: Interface Conditions on Prosodic Deletion John Benjamins Amsterdam
Roland Hausser Dietmer Zaefferer (1978) Questions and Answers in a Contextdependent Montague Grammar F. Guenther S. J. Schmidt (Eds) Formal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Language D. Reidel Dordrecht 339–358
Ken Hiraiwa Shinichiro Ishihara (2002) ArticleTitleMissing Links: Cleft, Sluicing, and ‘No Da’ Construction in Japanese MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 43 35–54
Hoji, Hajime: 1987, ‘Japanese Clefts and Reconstruction/Chain Binding Effects’, Handout of Talk Presented at WCCFL 6, University of Arizona.
Hoji, Hajime: 1990, ‘Theories of Anaphora and Aspects of Japanese Syntax’, Ms., University of Southern California.
Hoji, Hajime and Teruhiko Fukaya: 2001, ‘On Island Repair and CM vs. Non-CM Constructions in English and Japanese’, Handout of Presentation at Kaken Workshop on Ellipsis, Kyoto.
Laurence R. Horn (1989) A Natural History of Negation University of Chicago Press Chicago, IL
Ray Jackendoff (2002) Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution Oxford University Press Oxford
Otto Jespersen (1924) The Philosophy of Grammar George Allen & Unwin London
Kyle Johnson (1996) Search of the Middle Field Ms., University of Massachusetts Amherst
Kyle Johnson (2001) What VP-ellipsis Can Do, What it Can’t, But Not Why Mark Baltin Chris Collins (Eds) The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory Blackwell Malden, MA 439–479
Kyle Johnson (2002) Towards an Etiology of Adjunct Islands Ms., University of Massachusetts Amherst
Andrew Kehler (2002) Coherence, Reference, and the Theory of Grammar Center for the Study of Language and Information Stanford, CA
Christopher Kennedy Jason Merchant (2000) ArticleTitleAttributive Comparative Deletion Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18 89–146
Hisatsugu Kitahara (1999) Eliminating * as a Feature (of Traces) Samuel David Epstein Norbert Hornstein (Eds) Working Minimalism MIT Press Cambridge, MA 77–93
Wolfgang Klein (1985) Ellipse, Fokusgliederung und thematischer Stand Reinhard Meyer-Hermann Hannes Rieser (Eds) Ellipsen und fragmentarische Ausdrücke Niemeyer Tübingen 1–24
Wolfgang Klein (1993) Ellipse Joachim Jacobs Arnim Stechow Particlevon Wolfgang Sternefeld Theo Vennemann (Eds) Syntax: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research De Gruyter Berlin 763–799
Susumu Kuno Jane Robinson (1972) ArticleTitleMultiple wh-questions Linguistic Inquiry 3 463–487
Howard Lasnik (2001) ArticleTitleWhen Can you Save a Structure by Destroying It? Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society 31 301–320
Howard Lasnik Marmoru Saito (1984) ArticleTitleOn the Nature of Proper Government Linguistic Inquiry 15 235–289
Howard Lasnik Marmoru Saito (1992) Move α MIT Press Cambridge, MA
Anne Lobeck (1991) The Phrase Structure of Ellipsis Susan Rothstein (Eds) Perspectives on Phrase Structure Academic Press San Diego 81–103
Anne Lobeck (1995) Ellipsis: Functional Heads, Licensing, and Identification Oxford University Press Oxford
Ludlow, Peter: to appear, ‘A Note on Alleged Cases of Nonsentential Assertion’, in Reinaldo Elugardo and Robert Stainton (eds.), Ellipsis and Non-sentential Speech, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
James McCawley (1991) Contrastive Negation and Metalinguistic Negation Lise Dobrin Lynn Nichols Rosa Rodriguez (Eds) CLS 27: The Parasession on Negation Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago, IL 189–206
James McCloskey (1996) ArticleTitleOn the Scope of Verb Movement in Irish Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14 47–104
Jason Merchant (1998) ArticleTitle“Pseudosluicing”: Elliptical Clefts in Japanese and English ZAS Working Papers in Linguistics 10 88–112
Jason Merchant (2001) The Syntax of Silence: Sluicing, Islands, and the Theory of Ellipsis Oxford University Press Oxford
Jason Merchant (2003) Subject-Auxiliary Inversion in Comparatives and PF Output Constraints Kerstin Schwabe Susanne Winkler (Eds) The Interfaces: Deriving and Interpreting Omitted Structures John Benjamins Amsterdam 55–77
Merchant, Jason: 2003b, ‘Remarks on Strip**’, Ms., University of Chicago.
Jason Merchant (2004) Resumptivity and Non-movement Studies in Greek Linguistics 24 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Thessaloniki
Merchant, Jason: to appear, ‘Variable Island Repair under Ellipsis’, in Kyle Johnson (ed.), Topics in Ellipsis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Jerry Morgan (1973) Sentence Fragments and the Notion “sentence” Braj Kachru Robert Lees Yakov Malkiel Angelina Pietrangeli Sol Saporta (Eds) Issues in Linguistics University of Illinois Press Urbana 719–751
Jerry Morgan (1989) Sentence Fragments Revisited Bradley Music Randolph Graczyk Caroline Wiltshire (Eds) CLS 25, Parasession on Language in Context Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago 228–241
Gereon Müller (1997) Incomplete Category Fronting: A Derivational Approach to Remnant Movement in German Kluwer Academic Publishers Dordrecht
Nakamura, Masanori: 2002, ‘Locality under Ellipsis in Japanese’, Ms., Senshu University, Leiden University.
Donna Jo Napoli (1982) ArticleTitleInitial Material Deletion in English Glossa 16 85–111
Yongkyoon No (1991) ArticleTitleA Centering Approach to the (CASE)(TOPIC) Restriction in Korean Linguistics 29 653–668
Jairo Nunes Juan Uriagereka (2000) ArticleTitleCyclicity and Extraction Domains Syntax 3 20–43
Frans Plank (1995) Double Case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme Oxford University Press New York
Paul Postal (1993) ArticleTitleRemarks on Weak Crossover Linguistic Inquiry 24 539–556
Paul Postal (1998) Three Investigations of Extraction MIT Press Cambridge, MA
Potsdam, Eric: 1998, Syntactic Issues in the English Imperative, Garland, New York.
Pullum, Geoffrey: 2001, ‘Hankamer Was!’, in Chung, Sandra, James McCloskey, and Nathan Sanders (eds.), The Jorge Hankamer WebFest, University of California, Santa Cruz; http://ling.ucsc.edu/Jorge/pullum.html.
Ingo Reich (2002) ArticleTitleQuestion/Answer Congruence and the Semantics of wh-phrases Theoretical Linguistics 28 73–94
Ingo Reich (2003) Frage, Antwort und Fokus Akademie Verlag Berlin
Norvin Richards (2001) Movement in Language: Interactions and Architectures Oxford University Press Oxford
Henk Riemsdijk Particlevan (1978) A Case Study in Syntactic Markedness: The Binding Nature of Prepositional Phrases Peter De Ridder Dordrecht
Luigi Rizzi (1997) The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery Liliane Haegeman (Eds) Elements of Grammar Kluwer Academic Publishers Dordrecht 281–337
Ross, John R.: 1967, ‘Constraints on Variables in Syntax’, PhD thesis, MIT. [Published 1986 as Infinite Syntax, Ablex: New York.]
John R. Ross (1969) Guess Who? Robert Binnick Alice Davison Georgia Green Jerry Morgan (Eds) Papers from the 5th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago, IL 252–286
Ross, Haj: 2000, ‘Inversion and Coreference in Pseudoclefts’, Ms., University of North Texas.
Jerrold Sadock (1974) Read at Your Own Risk: Syntactic and Semantic Horrors You Can Find in Your Own Medicine Chest Papers from the 10th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago, IL 599–607
Ivan Sag (1976) Deletion and Logical Form Garland Press New York
Saito, Mamoru: 1985, ‘Some Asymmetries in Japanese and Their Theoretical Implications’, PhD thesis, MIT.
Paul Schachter (1977) ArticleTitleDoes She or Doesn’t She? Linguistic Inquiry 8 763–767
Paul Schachter (1978) ArticleTitleEnglish Propredicates Linguistic Analysis 4 187–224
Roger Schank Robert Abelson (1977) Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Hillsdale, NJ
Philippe Schlenker (2003) ArticleTitleClausal Equations (A Note on the Connectivity Problem) Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21 157–214
Kerstin Schwabe (1994) Syntax und Semantik Situativer Ellipsen Gunter Narr Tübingen
Shopen, Tim: 1972, ‘A Generative Theory of Ellipsis: A Consideration of the Linguistic Use of Silence’, Reproduced by the Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Tim Shopen (1973) ArticleTitleEllipsis as Grammatical Indeterminacy Foundations of Language 10 65–77
Dan Sperber Deirdre Wilson (1986) Relevance Blackwell Oxford
Robert Stainton (1995) ArticleTitleNon-sentential Assertions and Semantic Ellipsis Linguistics and Philosophy 18 281–296
Robert Stainton (1997) ArticleTitleUtterance Meaning and Syntactic Ellipsis Pragmatics and Cognition 5 51–78
Robert Stainton (1998) ArticleTitleQuantifier Phrases, Meaningfulness ‘In Isolation’, and Ellipsis Linguistics and Philosophy 21 311–340
Stainton, Robert: to appear, ‘In Defense of Non-sentential Assertion’, in Zoltan Szabo (ed.), Semantics vs. Pragmatics, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Jason Stanley (2000) ArticleTitleContext and Logical Form Linguistics and Philosophy 23 391–434
Stowell, Tim: 1981, ‘Origins of Phrase Structure’, PhD thesis, MIT.
Ludwig Sütterlin (1907) Die deutsche Sprache der Gegenwart Voigtländer Leipzig
Tomioka, Satoshi: 2003, ‘Another Sloppy Identity Puzzle’, Ms., University of Delaware.
Juan Uriagereka (1999) ArticleTitleMinimal Restrictions on Basque Movements Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17 403–444
Vat, Jan: 1981, ‘Left Dislocation, Connectedness, and Reconstruction’, Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik Nr. 20. [Reprinted in Anagnostopoulou, Elena, Henk van Riemsdijk, and Frans Zwarts (eds.), 1997, Materials on Left Dislocation, pp. 67–92, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.]
Gert Webelhuth (1992) Principles and Parameters of Syntactic Saturation Oxford University Press Oxford
Chris Wilder (1997) Some Properties of Ellipsis in Coordination Artemis Alexiadou Tracy Hall (Eds) Studies in Universal Grammar and Typological Variation John Benjamins Amsterdam 59–107
Winkler, Susanne: 2003, Ellipsis at the Interfaces, Habilitationsschrift, University of Tübingen.
Nancy Yanofsky (1978) NP Utterances Donka Farkas Wesley Jacobsen Karol Todrys (Eds) CLS 14 Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago, IL 491–502
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Merchant, J. Fragments and ellipsis. Linguist Philos 27, 661–738 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-005-7378-3
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-005-7378-3