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In Finnish a yes/no‐question is normally answered by repeating the finite verb or auxiliary, optionally followed by a string of nonfinite verbs and certain adverbs. The claim is that these yes/no replies (YNRs) are derived by two movements: (1) movement of vP or a larger verb projection containing the subject to the spec of a Topic phrase, where it is either spelled out phonologically, or spelled out as null, resulting in ellipsis; (2) movement of the remnant Polarity phrase to the spec of a higher Focus phrase, where it is spelled out phonologically. This accounts for the syntactic as well as the semantic and distributional properties of YNRs. For example, it accounts for why they have no visible subject, although Finnish does not otherwise allow null subjects in the 3rd person. There is another form of YNR constructed with the subject. These are derived by vP‐ellipsis and head movement of Pol to Focus.
Anders Holmberg (Wed,) studied this question.