Fragment questions: A direct interpretation approach

Ellipsis typically occurs in declarative sentences, but can also appear in questions including fragment questions (FQs) like What about Mimi? in English or Mimi-nun ‘Mimi-TOP?’ in Korean. These fragment questions also have some understood materials unexpressed, but induce a full sentential question meaning. This paper reviews some key properties of such FQs in Korean, and then discusses possible arguments for a move-and-delete sentential approach. After reviewing challenging issues for the sentential approach, the paper then offers a direct interpretation (DI) approach, which refers to no sentential sources but to discourse structure. It suggests that this DI approach is a more feasible direction for the analysis of FQs in Korean. (Kyung Hee University)