On amwuto ‘anyone’ and Its Kin in Korean: Their Status and Licensing as a Fragment Answer

Abstract

This paper examines the indefinite expressions such as amwu-N-to ‘any+N+even’, etten-N-to ‘ANY+N+even’, and amwu-N-Case marker ‘any+N+Nom/Acc’ in Korean as a fragment answer to a positive wh-question. We first argue that these expressions are better analyzed as a negative concord item (NCI). Noting that they vary in acceptability as a fragment answer, we provisionally suggest that the NCIs in Korean differ in their ability to check off the negative feature (postulated for a null negative head) in fragment constructions. We also argue that the NCIs in Korean lack scrambling effects that apparently enable a certain NCI in the embedded clause to scramble to the matrix clause to enter into a licensing relation with the negative head up there.