The root DNS server, only being authoritative for the root, responds with a list of DNS servers authoritative for the gTLD specified in the query (.com, .net, .tv, .fu, etc). The protocol continues as such, w/ the full query always being sent to each successive DNS server throughout this process. Since it's not possible to know which DNS server will be authoritative for any given query and we want to minimize the number of round-trips, we always send the full domain in each query.