Fragment Answers in Hindi

Abstract

Holmberg (2015) and Merchant (2005) among others have argued for an analysis of fragment answers wherein they are CPs but have undergone constituent ellipsis under identity with the question; building on the proposal that questions and answer have similar syntactic structure. Focusing on yes/no fragment answers in Hindi, I provide an account for answers of the type I describe as the ‘verb stacking’ pattern and thereby extend the attested typological variations in fragment answers to yes/no questions. Yes/no questions in Hindi are answered by obligatorily repeating all the verbal elements in the order they occur in, in the question. Extending Holmberg’s (2015) analysis for optional verb stacking in Finnish to Hindi, I argue, with independent evidence that the subject in Hindi may stay in spec,?P and the verb moves outside of ?P. I posit that PolP can be IP-internal and argue for it to be the highest head in the ?P domain in Hindi. I also posit that fragment answers are obtained by elison of PolP which effectively is verb stranding ?P ellipsis.