Fragments of Self-Pronouns in English: A Direct Generation Analysis

This paper explores an intersection of two central issues of Generative Grammar, ellipsis and anaphora. Specifically, I focus on fragments of self -pronouns, i.e. short responses constituted by single self -pronouns, and argue that they give a piece of evidence for the direct-generation analysis of fragments, in which fragments are not derived from underlying full sentences but directly generated as what they are. I demonstrate that self -pronouns are much less restricted in fragments than in sentences, showing cases of fragments of self -pronouns whose sentential counterparts are ungrammatical for violation of Binding Condition A. Then, Binding Theory as well as the deletion analysis of fragments are challenged. The fact indicates that self -pronouns are all logophors or logophoric anaphoras when they are fragments. This is predicted by Reinhart and Reuland’s (1993) generalization that self -pronouns are anaphors only when they are arguments of syntactic predicates. The requirement is not fulfilled in fragments, if they have no covert sentential structures.