Fragment answers in Korean: A direct interpretation approach

Cho, Sae-Youn. 2016. Fragment answers in Korean: A direct interpretation approach. Linguistic Research 33(2), 229-257. This paper aims to account for idiosyncratic properties of fragment answers (FAs) as answers to wh-questions in Korean, focusing on case identity and generating issues. The main issue on FAs is the existence of the (case-) marker attached to fragment NP(s), which is a crucial factor to analyze how each fragment is linked to each corresponding wh-phrase and how it conveys a desirable sentential meaning. Further, FAs can occur with adjunct phrases with no correlates. To account for the various properties of FAs, we take the Direct Interpretation Approach (DIA) to claim that contra to the Ellipsis Approach (EA), Korean FA constructions can be accounted for by proposing a Korean FA construction with minimum syntactic constraints within the Construction Grammar. In doing so, we assume semantic and pragmatic information on an answerer’s background knowledge including question under discussions (QUD) to get a full sentential reading from FAs. This enables us to explain peculiar properties of the FAs in Korean. (Kangwon National University)