Fragment Anchors Do Not Support the Syntactic Integration of Appositive Relative Clauses: Reply to Griffiths and De Vries 2013

Various views exist in the literature about whether parentheticals should be accommodated by syntactic or discursive means (or both). Some (e.g., Safir 1986, Fabb 1990, Haegeman 1991) have suggested, in various ways, that parentheticals are not syntactically integrated into their hosts, but associate with them at some extragrammatical level of (discourse) representation; this has come to be known as the orphan approach to parenthesis. The opposing view (represented by, e.g., Jackendoff 1977, Potts 2005, De Vries 2007, 2012) holds that parataxis is a bona fide syntactic phenomenon and hence that parentheticals are represented as integral constituents of their hosts; call this the integration approach.Griffiths and De Vries (2013) (henceforth, G&V) have argued that fragment answers furnish evidence for this latter approach, specifically for the syntactic integration of appositive relative clauses (ARCs). G&V claim that their data could not be captured by an...