Abstract
This manuscript presents a dependency grammar (DG) theory of answer fragments. The ellipsis mechanism implicated in answer fragments is called fragment ellipsis. The potential of a DG account based on the catena unit is probed, but found to be insufficient because it fails to account for certain cases involving in-situ focusing, e.g. Institutional what is hindering progress? – Authority. Therefore, an alternative account is produced, one that identifies four constraints on answer fragments, two that pertain to the elided material and two that pertain to the remnants that survive ellipsis. These four constraints then predict the shape of answer fragments to a large extent.
Funding statement: The research presented in this article was funded by the Ministry of Education of the Peoples Republic of China, grant # 15YJA74001.
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