Sentence fragments or stripped expressions such as fragment answers (FAs), illustrated in (1a), have evoked several questions. Among these questions, two crucial ones are (a) whether or not stripped expressions involve underlying full sentences; and (b) if stripped expressions are derived from full-fledged sentences followed by deletion, whether or not the elided part forms a syntactic constituent (Morgan 1973, 1989, Yanofsky 1978, Chung, Ladusaw, and McCloskey 1995, Merchant 2004, and references therein). Assimilating FAs to sluicing, Merchant (2004) provides an analysis that addresses both of these issues. Merchant posits that FAs involve deletion of a syntactic constituent from underlying full sentences. Specifically, the fragment moves to a clause-peripheral position followed by TP-ellipsis, as schematized in (1b).
In this squib, examining FAs containing the particle -yo in Korean, illustrated in (2), I provide new evidence in support of...