Sprouting in HPSG : MAX-QUD and Lexico-Syntactic Constraint

Abstract

Although sluicing is one of the most discussed topics in the literature, sprouting, where the wh-remnant has no correlate in its antecedent clause, still remains theoretically uncertain. The present paper thus aims to investigate the licensing condition of sprouting by examining its syntactic peculiarities and propose a unified account on both merger and sprouting in the framework of Head-Driven Pharase Structure Grammar (HPSG). Specifically, we will modify the non-elliptical analysis on sluicing suggested by Ginzburg and Sag(2000), as MAX-QUD, a contextual attribute, takes the ARG_ST list of the verb head in its antecedent clause, so that the wh-sluice can encompass the lexico-syntactic information from the antecedent clause.