Verb-echo answers to a certain type of questions in Nanjing Mandarin

Abstract A verb-echo answer (VEA) is a short answer that repeats the verb from the preceding polar question. This study examines VEAs to a particular type of polar question in a Chinese dialect, Nanjing Mandarin (NM), and argues that VEAs are derived through head movement and clausal ellipsis. This paper provides various evidence to support this analysis by showing that VEAs are compatible with undroppable subjects and that idiom chunks are understood in VEAs. It also shows that VEAs allow real adjunct-including readings. In addition, this study presents a novel finding concerning the verb-initial construction in NM, suggesting that V-to-C movement is permissible. The analysis leads to two consequences concerning head movement: violations of Head Movement Constraint cannot be repaired by clausal ellipsis, and the instance of head movement observed in this paper is a syntactic operation.