earticle

영어

Clause ellipsis can be defined as a subspecies of ellipsis whereby an entire clause is missing. One of such typical examples is a fragment answer. The idiomatic fragment may be derived from a fully clausal source via ellipsis. The repair-by-ellipsis for island effects is not involved in the head blocking (i.e., Neg blocking, here) within the idiomatic domain. The idiomatic fragment answer undergoes focus movement to [Spec, FP] (i.e., [Spec, CP]) at PF. This is in accordance with the fact that the idiomatic themes may undergo focus movement when they are contrasted to be focused. While the fragment answer to the plain echo question is ambiguous between literal and idiomatic meanings, the fragment answer to the negative echo question has only a literal meaning. This is because the idiomatic domain of the fragment answer cannot be extended to FP (i.e., CP, here) beyond the NegP between VP (or vP) and TP since the head [Neg] blocks the head C through T from merging with the head [V] (i.e., verb root) at PF. Hence, the fragment answer to the negative echo question cannot have an idiomatic meaning. In addition, while the plain fragments may be extracted out of the embedded clause, the idiomatic fragments aren’t. That is, the idiomatic fragment answers are only derived from a simplex clausal source via ellipsis.