Fragment answers with negative dependencies in Korean: a direct interpretation approach

Abstract Fragment answers are nonsentential utterances quite pervasive in daily-life dialogues. This article focuses on fragment answers involving a negative dependency expression in Korean. The key question for the analysis of such a negative fragment expression is how to resolve sentential meaning from its non-sentential status. This article argues against sentential approaches that postulate clausal sources together with move-and-delete operations to generate negative fragments. Instead, the article supports a discourse-based direct interpretation analysis that allows negative fragment answers to be directly projected as a full utterance and obtain their propositional meaning by referring to the organized discourse structure in question.