Resumptive Pronouns and Competition

Abstract

A Minimalist hypothesis about resumptive pronouns is that they should be no different from ordinary pronouns ( McCloskey 2006 ). The article substantiates this hypothesis with respect to a particular view of pronouns: pronouns are ‘‘elsewhere’’ elements. Just as the interpretation of ordinary pronouns, on this view, is determined by competition with anaphors, so the interpretation of resumptive pronouns is determined by competition with gaps. On the basis of new facts in Hebrew and systematic differences between optional and obligatory pronouns, I argue that the tail of a relative clause movement chain is realized as the least specified form available. Since their interpretive properties are fully determined by external factors, resumptive pronouns must be part of the syntactic derivation, not items merged from the (traditional) lexicon.

Pronoun copying in Dinka Bor and the Copy Theory of Movement

“…In particular, we will see that similar effects to the featural mismatch and the singular gap found in Dinka are attested in other constructions in which pronouns have been analyzed as realizations of the gap, such as resumption, wh-copying, subject doubling, and clitic doubling (e.g. Zaenen et al 1981;Koopman 1982Koopman , 1984Sells 1984;Engdahl 1985;Pesetsky 1998;Kandybowicz 2007;Holmberg and Nikanne 2008;Harizanov 2014;Sichel 2014). I demonstrate that we can capture these person mismatches and gaps in the same way and show how a partial deletion model can accommodate variation across pronoun copying constructions.…”

“…This effect provides novel evidence for the claim that pronouns may act as the spell-out of a gap (e.g. Zaenen et al 1981;Koopman 1982Koopman , 1984Sells 1984;Engdahl 1985;Pesetsky 1998;Boeckx 2003;Kandybowicz 2007;Holmberg and Nikanne 2008;Harizanov 2014;Sichel 2014).…”

“…In this way, Dinka provides novel evidence that pronouns can mark positions in a movement dependency and act as realizations of gaps (e.g. Zaenen et al 1981;Koopman 1982Koopman , 1984Sells 1984;Engdahl 1985;Pesetsky 1998;Kandybowicz 2007;Holmberg and Nikanne 2008;Harizanov 2014;Sichel 2014). Importantly, this type of construction cannot be captured by an approach to multiple copy spell-out along the lines of Nunes (1995Nunes ( , 2004.…”

“…Such phenomena have been documented in at least resumption (2a) (e.g. Zaenen et al 1981;Engdahl 1982Engdahl , 1985Boeckx 2003;McCloskey 2006;Kandybowicz 2007;Sichel 2014), wh-copying constructions (2b) (e.g. Fanselow and Mahajan 2000;Felser 2004;Bruening 2006;Pankau 2013), clitic doubling (2c) (e.g.…”

Cyclicity and Connectivity in Nez Perce Relative Clauses

“…The third approach maintains that both headraising and non-head-raising structures are required for relative clauses, and indeed that relative clauses are often structurally ambiguous. That conclusion has been defended on a variety of grounds by Å farli (1994), Sauerland (1998), Bhatt (2002), Hulsey and Sauerland (2006), Szczegielniak (2006), Harris (2008), and Sichel (2014).…”