A hybrid ellipsis analysis of two types of fragments in Korean

Nominal fragments in Korean can take two different forms: case-marked forms and caseless forms. Previous approaches to the two types of fragments are divided into two directions: uniform analyses and hybrid analyses. Uniform analyses are further classified into two species: direct interpretation approaches and ellipsis approaches. The direct interpretation approaches basically assume that fragments are non-sentential XPs. On this view, the unexpressed parts of the fragments’ interpretation are supplied not through syntactic structure but via correspondence with the meaning of the antecedent sentence. The ellipsis approaches, by contrast, assume that fragments have sentential sources and are derived through deletion process. Hybrid analyses, on the other hand, suggest that some fragments involve sentential sources and that others are non-sentential XPs. We propose that both case-marked and caseless fragments involve movement and TP deletion but that their sentential sources are not identical—a hybrid ellipsis analysis. We show that parallel behaviors of two types of fragments are explained under the assumption that they have sentential sources, while non-parallel behaviors are explained because of their different sentential sources. Our analysis further offers fresh accounts for adnonimal modifier fragments and their interesting contrasts.