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  • Fragments with Correction
  • Anikó Lipták

Run-of-the-mill fragments, like (1B), have propositional meaning, containing a predicate that is identical to the one in the fragment's antecedent. This correspondence is one of the crucial reasons why structural theories of ellipsis (like PF deletion or LF copying accounts) assume that the fragment should be related to its fully pronounced version in (1B').

(1) A: Who are you shouting at?
B: My sister.
B': I'm shouting at my sister.

This squib presents novel data where the same correspondence is not observed. In the novel data, the original predicate cannot form part of the fragment in its ordinary meaning, posing a puzzle for the representation of the ellipsis site. The relevant data are described in sections 1 and 2. Section 3 then shows that the puzzle cannot be solved with reference to a nonisomorphic underlier in the ellipsis site. Section 4 offers a solution in two steps. First, an account based on accommodation of the lexical content of the ellipsis site is sketched (section 4.1). This proposal is shown to be untenable in structural accounts of ellipsis due to violations of syntactic and lexical identity (section 4.2), and it is replaced by an account in terms of metalinguistic reference (mixed quotation) in the ellipsis site (section 4.3). A quotation-based structural account is also suggested to be more parsimonious than a nonstructural account of the data.

1 The Puzzle: Pom Pom Dialogues

In naturally occurring conversations, a fragment answering a wh-question can be followed by an adversative continuation that negates the verb. The negated verb is usually pronounced with focal stress and supplies a correction with respect to the original predicate.

(2)

a. A: Where are you running to?
B: To school, but I'm not running.

b. A: What are you devouring?
B: A pizza, but I'm not devouring it.

c. A: Who are you shouting at?
B: My sister, but I'm not shouting. [End Page 154]

As the presumed nonelliptical versions of these fragments in (3) indicate, supplying the answers with the original predicate results in incongruence (indicated by #): the first conjunct asserts a proposition and the second conjunct denies it. This leads to contradictory statements.

(3)

a. A: Where are you running to?
B: #I'm running to school, but I'm not running.

b. A: What are you devouring?
B: #I'm devouring a pizza, but I'm not devouring it.

c. A: Who are you shouting at?
B: #I'm shouting at my sister, but I'm not shouting.

Importantly, while the answers in (3) contain incongruent responses to a question, the elliptical answers in (2) are not incongruent in the same way. They do not give the impression that the speaker is confused about the kind of event he was involved in or that he changes his mind halfway through his utterance.

Answers like those in (2) are natural responses to questions. As the Hungarian equivalent of (2a) is the recurring initial dialogue in the cartoon series Pom Pom meséi (Tales of Pom Pom, penned by István Csukás 1979/1980), this kind of question-answer pair will be referred to as Pom Pom dialogues. While the rest of the examples in this squib will mostly come from English, these dialogues are also natural in Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, and possibly other languages.

Pom Pom dialogues pose a puzzle for theories of ellipsis, as it is not evident what kind of predicate should be construed as part of the representation of the fragment. Assuming a structural approach according to which there is syntactic structure in the ellipsis site (a reason for this choice will be provided in section 3) and a lexicalist stance according to which structure is built from lexical items, this squib describes the puzzle and sketches a solution for it.

2 Properties of Pom Pom Dialogues

Pom Pom dialogues contain a question about an event that in the addressee's view is being wrongly characterized by the questioner. They require a specific context that allows the addressee to identify the event the questioner is referring to.

The contested matter usually corresponds...

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