On the Island Repair in Korean Fragments

Abstract

Various elliptical constructions are island-insensitive. The repair approach argues that the island-insensitivity arises because island violations can be repaired by ellipsis in PF (Merchant 2001, 2004). On the other hand, the non-repair approach argues that the island- insensitive elliptical construction is derived from alternative underlying sources that contain no islands to begin with (e.g. Barros, Elliott and Thoms 2014). In this paper, we argue that island repair in Korean fragments is real, by demonstrating that they remain island-insensitive even in the contexts where no alternative sources are available. We will also provide an account for why in certain contexts the island-sensitivity re- emerges, based on the notion of intervener induced by island- violating movement.