Fragment Answers and Islands

Abstract

Abstract. The aim of this study is to show that fragment answers in Turkish are elliptical structures, where CP is targeted for ellipsis after a fragment answer moves to FP above CP. Evidence for the elliptical nature of fragment answers comes from binding, Case matching, scope, and postposition pied‐piping, among others. An analysis is given of N‐words as fragment answers and how (semantic) parallelism is satisfied in those cases. These elliptical structures are island‐insensitive in Turkish. Fragment answers are island‐insensitive because they move to a position that selects the elision site CP; thus, all the copies of a fragment answer that lack the ✓‐feature due to crossing an island are elided in the elision site ( Merchant 2004 ). This study also argues that fragment answers in English cannot be argued to be island‐sensitive based on the data in Merchant 2004 .

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