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The Complex Adaptive Systems Principles (CASP) model of SLA claims that L1 transfer results when language processing effort is minimized. This claim was investigated by a self-paced on-line sentence judgment task in which L1 Arabic and Korean speakers and a control group of L1 English speakers read and judged English subject, direct object, and oblique relative clauses (RCs) in gapped and resumptive pronoun (RP) conditions. It was hypothesized that L1 influence would cause the Arabic speakers to accept English RCs with RPs more frequently than Korean speakers because RPs are acceptable in Arabic direct object and oblique RCs, whereas Korean bans RPs in these RC types. It was also hypothesized that the L2 English speakers would accept RPs more often than the L1 English speakers because RPs would ease L2 sentence processing. As predicted, L1 Arabic speakers accepted RPs more frequently than L1 Korean speakers, a transfer effect, and both L2 English groups accepted RPs more frequently than L1 English speakers, a processing effect. The results thus support the CASP model's claim that L1 transfer is conditioned by language processing and other complex SLA processes that interact with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate bilinguals' sensitivity to two structures that display overlapping word orders across their two languages but are argued to have different derivational properties in their formation. We focus on filler-gap dependencies with and without resumptive pronouns in Egyptian Arabic, a language argued to have grammatical resumptive pronouns base generated at the tail end of nominal A-bar dependencies, and English, a language argued to have intrusive resumptive pronouns inserted post-syntactically due to illicit movement operations, such as in syntactic islands. Using experimental data from code-switched filler-gap dependencies, we argue that when given conflicting requirements of structural well-formedness, this population of bilinguals converge on a single structural representation across their two languages, resulting in a one-to-one mapping between derivational properties and surface form rather than maintaining two distinct representations resulting in a many-to-one mapping. To explain why bilinguals may have chosen to converge onto a unified structure rather than maintaining two distinct representations, we highlight that such one-on-one mapping is part of an arsenal of optimization strategies observable in the grammars of various bilingual populations in which bilinguals capitalize on the structural overlaps already present between their two languages. For the purpose of this paper, such optimization results in a structure that is ultimately common to both English and Egyptian Arabic, for this population of bilinguals.

Left peripheral topics and foci often differ with respect to resumption: in languages such as Italian, Tzotzil Maya, and Warlpiri, while fronted topics may be co-indexed with a pronominal form in the corresponding argument position, fronted foci correspond to a gap. However, this contrast does not universally apply. In languages such as Anyi and Baule, two Kwa languages of Côte d'Ivoire, subjects and animate objects must be resumed by a pronoun whenever they appear in the left periphery – independent of information structure. The question is whether this instance of cross-linguistic variation arises through differences in the syntax of left peripheral positions in various languages or in the conditions of resumption. The present study examines data from Kwa languages and concludes that the difference lies in the conditions of resumption, which are orthogonal to the syntactic differences between topics and foci. Resumptives have a dual nature in these languages, serving as anaphoric constants (true resumptives) in topicalization and as bound variables (apparent resumptives) in focus constructions. A survey of the relevant facts in further Kwa languages reveals that resumption is determined by factors that are independent from information structure and relate to the recoverability of empty argument positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distinction between weak and strong islands has been extensively explored in the literature from both a descriptive and analytical perspective. In this paper, I document and analyze island constructions and constraints in Mende, an understudied Mande language spoken in Sierra Leone. Mende has both weak islands (left branch and wh-islands) and strong islands (adjunct clauses, sentential subjects, and coordinate structures). Intriguingly, it has a third class of islands, that I call mixed islands which show a subject–non-subject asymmetry in allowing for movement out of relative clauses, only when they modify the subject. As such, subject-modifying RCs cannot be classified as (strong/weak) islands in Mende. This is the first systematic work on islands and island constraints in the Mande language family, and, as such, it brings novel data from an understudied language family to bear on our understanding of A-bar dependencies and the study of island escape in African languages. It also calls into question a neat paradigm of cross-linguistic island constraints. Importantly, this work also lays down a baseline for future research on island constraints in the broader Mande language family. In order to discuss island constraints, this paper also lays out the first analysis of relative clauses in Mende, while integrating new research on the left periphery, focus constructions, and wh-constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on an experimental study on the acquisition of prepositional relative clauses in second language European Portuguese by Chinese native speakers. It focuses on the role of resumption, mandatory in prepositional relative clauses in Chinese (the native language of the learners) and non-conventional in European Portuguese (the target language). Results of an oral production task and two online acceptability judgment tasks indicated that resumption does not transfer from the native language, and that Chinese learners of European Portuguese employ movement structures to produce and process relative clauses. Additionally, results showed that resumptive pronouns do not rescue or ameliorate ungrammatical extractions from islands, contrary to what is traditionally assumed in grammatical theory. This finding was kept constant across participants, native and non-native. Overall, we conclude that second language speakers are able to select and reassemble movement features in their non-native language and use similar processing mechanisms as native speakers to analyse island configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the Minimalist Program (MP), Relative clauses (RCs) are considered complementizer clauses (CPs) containing a C with an edge feature [EF] in the form of [wh] and [EPP] but no tense feature. This study investigates Persian RC derivation based on MP. By proposing two approaches, namely: (1) ‘ke-movement’ and (2) ‘null wh-operator (OP) movement’, we will consistently argue and show that the null wh-OP approach provides an appropriate generalization for Persian restrictive RCs. Adopting the latter, the results display Persian RCs can be analyzed as CPs with a null wh-OP assuming to undertake wh-movement as copying and deletion from different syntactic positions, i.e., subject, direct object, object of preposition, etc. This operator allows a small pro in the subject position, leaving an optional null copy, either allowing an optional resumptive pronoun (RP) behind in direct object position or attaching to the verb; and obligatorily in indirect object and object of preposition positions as well as Ezafe-construction. Also, the edge feature of the probe, the complementizer ke, attracts the null wh-OP to Spec-C, for checking and valuing the unvalued [wh] and [EPP] features. The long relative clause derivations can, correspondingly, work as expected by the successive cyclic movement of OP through intermediate Spec-C positions as well.

The distinction between weak and strong islands has been extensively explored in the literature from both a descriptive and analytical perspective. In this paper, I document and analyze island constructions and constraints in Mende, an understudied Mande language spoken in Sierra Leone. Mende has both weak islands (left branch and wh-islands) and strong islands (adjunct clauses, sentential subjects, and coordinate structures). Intriguingly, it has a third class of islands, that I call mixed islands which show a subject–non-subject asymmetry in allowing for movement out of relative clauses, only when they modify the subject. As such, subject-modifying RCs cannot be classified as (strong/weak) islands in Mende. This is the first systematic work on islands and island constraints in the Mande language family, and, as such, it brings novel data from an understudied language family to bear on our understanding of A-bar dependencies and the study of island escape in African languages. It also calls into question a neat paradigm of cross-linguistic island constraints. Importantly, this work also lays down a baseline for future research on island constraints in the broader Mande language family. In order to discuss island constraints, this paper also lays out the first analysis of relative clauses in Mende, while integrating new research on the left periphery, focus constructions, and wh-constructions.

Within the Minimalist Program (MP), Relative clauses (RCs) are considered complementizer clauses (CPs) containing a C with an edge feature [EF] in the form of [wh] and [EPP] but no tense feature. This study investigates Persian RC derivation based on MP. By proposing two approaches, namely: (1) 'kemovement' and (2) 'null wh-operator (OP) movement', we will consistently argue and show that the null wh-OP approach provides an appropriate generalization for Persian restrictive RCs. Adopting the latter, the results display Persian RCs can be analyzed as CPs with a null wh-OP assuming to undertake whmovement as copying and deletion from different syntactic positions, i.e., subject, direct object, object of preposition, etc. This operator allows a small pro in the subject position, leaving an optional null copy, either allowing an optional resumptive pronoun (RP) behind in direct object position or attaching to the verb; and obligatorily in indirect object and object of preposition positions as well as Ezafe-construction. Also, the edge feature of the probe, the complementizer ke, attracts the null wh-OP to Spec-C, for checking and valuing the unvalued [wh] and [EPP] features. The long relative clause derivations can, correspondingly, work as expected by the successive cyclic movement of OP through intermediate Spec-C positions as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Austronesian languages exhibit an extraction restriction whereby only one particular DP—the "pivot" argument, the choice of which is reflected by morphology on the verb—can be Ā-extracted. We show that such extraction restrictions can vary between different Ā-constructions in Bikol: local clefting is limited to the pivot, whereas topicalization can target pivots and non-pivot agents but not non-pivot themes of transitive verbs. Following the phase-theoretic, locality-based approach to such extraction asymmetries in related Austronesian languages, we propose that clefting and topicalization differ in the featural specifications of their probes, with clefting necessarily targeting the closest DP and topicalization simply seeking the closest topic constituent. Evidence for this approach comes from the behavior of long-distance clefting, which may target certain non-pivot arguments and involve gaps or resumptive pronouns. The inventory of different long-distance cleft types is explained by the possibility of embedded topicalization and hanging topic left dislocation feeding higher clefting. Our study strengthens the view that the classic Austronesian pivot-only extraction restriction is best characterized in terms of syntactic locality, rather than as a restriction on the grammatical function or morphological case of movement targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of a self-paced reading experiment with object relative clauses and resumptive pronouns (RPs) in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). There are mixed reports on processing and acceptability of RPs compared to gapped relative clauses (MELTZER-ASSCHER, 2021), even in languages in which RPs are grammatically required in some relative clauses, such as Hebrew. In BP RPs are a less frequent and somewhat stigmatized variant (MOLLICA, 1977). Our results indicate that the presence of a RP seems to impose a filled-gap effect, which is distinct from the effect caused by an ungrammatical DP, and from which the processor recovers immediately in the following segments, for which reading times equated those for the grammatical gap. The comparison with a strong pronoun in completive clauses suggests that the processing cost of RPs is not due to the presence of the pronoun per se, but due to the high predictability of an unfilled gap in low complexity relative clauses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is a reply to Bassi and Rasin (2018) on the treatment of sentences like [The gifted mathematician that you claim to be] should have solved this task without problems by Grosu and Krifka (2007), which was published in Linguistics and Philosophy. Grosu and Krifka provide an analysis of the de dicto interpretation in which the bracketed expression refers to an individual concept. Bassi and Rasin question this because equivalent expressions in Hebrew, in which the gap is rendered by a resumptive pronoun, do not exhibit the de dicto interpretation, but only the de re interpretation. We provide independent evidence that person-marked pronouns in post-copular position are incompatible with antecedents that denote individual concepts, thus explaining Bassi and Rasin's observation within Grosu and Krifka's framework. We furthermore point out two new problems for the analysis of Bassi and Rasin presented in the body of their article, which does not make use of individual concepts or of some alternative mechanism that can deal with substitutivity in opaque contexts. We also note that an alternative analysis they present in an appendix amounts to a notational variant of ours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is ongoing debate about the role that resumptive pronouns play in the processing of islands in intrusive resumption languages such as English. This squib provides evidence that resumptive pronouns facilitate the comprehension of islands in online processing. The results fall in line with filler-gap processing more generally: when fillers are difficult or impossible to keep active, resumption provides support for forming a dependency. This occurs when dependencies span multiple clauses, when memory resources are otherwise taxed, or, as this squib shows, when grammatical constraints such as islands prohibit the use of the active-filler strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a description and account of the patterns of ex-situ focus in Dagbani. We show that there are two syntactic strategies for creating ex-situ focus in the language, one involving A’-movement to the left periphery, and the second involving base generation in the left periphery combined with coreference to a resumptive pronoun. Furthermore, we argue that subjects are difficult to move from Spec,TP to Spec,CP in the left-periphery because of anti-locality, which creates a tension when trying to focus subjects, which are required to derivationally fill the specifier of both positions. We further show that what looks to be a two-way distinction between the behaviour of subjects and non-subjects in the language is in fact a three-way distinction between subjects that are focussed to a local left-periphery, subjects that are focussed to a non-local left-periphery, and non-subjects. These distinctions arise due to there being two methods for Dagbani to resolve the antilocality problem of subject movement, and so local subjects solve the problem differently to non-local subjects.

This article extracts from synchronic data to systematically discuss focus clause constructions (FCCs) of Nkami, an endangered Kwa language of Ghana. It deals with issues that are of general interest in focus, syntax, typology, animacy and grammaticalization. It shows that Nkami exhibits both in-situ and ex-situ FCCs but, like most West African languages (cf. Boadi 1974, Fiedler et al. 2006/2010, Ameka 2010), there is an asymmetry between subject and non-subject focus. Almost all lexical words/phrases including adjectives can be preposed for focus in Nkami. Nkami joins Akan as being the only two Kwa languages described that obligatorily co-reference animate object NPs in ex-situ focus. Unlike most Kwa languages, predicates in focus are always overtly marked by focus markers (FMs). The paper varies from the conve ntion by some Kwa linguists (cf. Boadi 1974, Saah 1988, Ameka 2010, Ofori 2011, Duah 2015) by recognizing a morpheme, which is similar in distribution/function to what is so-called ‘Determiner’ as a FM. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

In polysynthetic West Caucasian languages, the morphological verbal complex amounts to a clause with all kinds of participants cross-referenced by affixes. Relativization is performed by introducing a relative affix in the cross-reference slot that corresponds to the relativized participant. However, these languages display several crosslinguistically rare features of relativization. Firstly, while under the view of the verbal complex as a clause this affix appears to be a relative pronoun, it is an unusual relative pronoun because it remains in situ. Secondly, relative affixes may appear several times in the same clause. Thirdly, relative pronouns are not expected to occur in languages with prenominal relative clauses. Fourthly, in the Circassian branch, relative pronouns are identical to reflexive pronouns. These features are explained by considering relative prefixes to be resumptive pronouns. This interpretation finds a parallel in the neighboring East Caucasian languages, where reflexive pronouns also show resumptive usages. Finally, since in some West Caucasian languages the relative affix is a morpheme with a dedicated relative function but still shows properties of a resumptive pronoun, our data suggest that the distinction between relative pronouns and resumptive pronouns may not be as clear as is usually assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish relative clauses, as in other languages, can contain a resumptive pronoun or other resumptive element. This study attempts to explain what factors favor the presence of such resumptive elements in the production of Spanish relative clauses. In order to do so, 1237 relatives clauses were extracted from an oral corpus of Peninsular Spanish conversations. A total of 18 factors, some new and some known from previous studies, pertaining to semantic and syntactic processing difficulties, were coded as potentially influencing the choice of a resumptive pronoun. Multivariate analysis (conditional tree and random forest) was then used to determine the significant factors and the most explicative minimal model. The results suggest that the conditions with the most impact are related to difficulties in determining the function of the relativizer. A discussion follows about how these difficulties relate to the different factors studied and how they could be due to a looser relationship between the clauses involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syntax literature reports that resumptive pronouns (RPs) ameliorate island violations, but much psycholinguistics literature has found RPs to be no more acceptable than straightforwardly island-violating gaps, even though island production tasks consistently elicit RPs. However, psycholinguistic studies have typically compared RP and illicit gap conditions indirectly. We posit that RP island amelioration in comprehension is undetectable when participants cannot compare alternative sentences, and thus that the apparent production/comprehension split arises from methodological differences between perception and production experiments. We present six experiments crossing three island types in two tasks (full-sentence forced choice and forced-choice fill-in-the-blank), manipulating gap location (island vs. nonisland). We find that RPs are preferred in islands and gaps in nonislands (p =.0001). This suggests that RPs do ameliorate island violations and that the production/comprehension split is a methodological artifact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies concluded that despite the parser's eagerness to resolve filler-gap dependencies, in island configurations it prefers to posit late grammatical gaps over early ungrammatical ones. This study investigates the possibility o f resolving filler-gap dependencies inside Hebrew islands. We investigated the acceptability of resumptive pronouns (RPs) in two islands and the sensitivity of on-line dependency formation to the status of those RPs. Results revealed a filled-gap effect inside the island that allows RPs but not inside the one that prohibits them. This suggests that active dependency formation can proceed inside islands, and that when processing dependencies with islands, the Hebrew parser prefers an early RP over a later gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is a corpus-based investigation of Persian relative clauses (RCs) used in written mode. 535 instances of RCs occurring in 1634 sentences in 40 editorials of four newspapers published in Iran were spotted and analyzed to determine the frequency of each RC type and the occurrence of certain features including complementizer ke, object marker râ, different representations of the relativised element in the modifying clause, and the status of gap and resumptive pronoun in the RC. The results indicated that subject RCs are the most frequent types. The tendency to use object marker râ before the modifying RC (Karimi, 2001) was confirmed. Besides, some tokens were witnessed contrasting Taghvaipour's (2005) proposals on the ungrammaticality of resumption in Persian subject ordinary and object free RCs and the necessity of prefix hær- 'ever' in all Persian free RCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often assumed in the theoretical syntax literature that intrusive resumptive pronouns can rescue island violations. However, recent experimental investigations did not provide strong evidence for such a rescuing effect. The current study examines intrusive resumption in Italian and English. In four experiments, we show that resumption indeed improves island violation to some degree, but such an effect is sensitive to task and contextual manipulations. In particular, the rescuing effect only surfaces with a comprehensibility but not a traditional acceptability task, and the effect is strongest when the antecedent of the resumptive pronoun is made sali- ent through additional context. At the same time, however, the effect of resumption in longer embedded clauses (compared to shorter ones) is much weaker. We discuss these findings in terms of how resumptive pronouns, although ungrammatical in English, can facilitate parsing in particular yet principled ways.

The consensus in the more recent literature on the Czech left periphery is that postulating only one functional projection above the highest head of the I-domain is not sufficient to account for certain data. The available analyses differ in detail, but most of them assume that particles such as že ('that') and aby ('for') are complementisers that are located in the highest head of the C-domain. Another assumption that is often made is that clitics such as se ('oneself') appear in either the highest head of the I-domain or the lowest head of the C-domain. Under certain unspecified conditions, clitics can optionally move to some higher functional head. In the account of the Czech left periphery proposed below, the positional (in)flexibility of complementisers and clitics is reversed. More concretely, the twofold claim advocated below is that clitics appear in I, and that complementisers might appear in either C or I. It follows that že and aby should not always be labeled 'complementisers'. While the above assumptions account for most of the attested distributional patterns, it is necessary to further assume that že, but not aby, might lexicalise a functional head immediately above CP. This is necessary to explain why contrastive left dislocation can take place below že, but not aby. The fully articulated structure of the Czech left periphery is taken to be the following: [CP2 [C2 {že/*aby/Ø} ] [CP1 XP [CP1 [C1 {že/?(?)aby/Ø} ] [IP XP [IP [I {že/aby/Ø}+CL ] [vP … XP … ]]]]]]. (The curly brackets denote a set of mutually exclusive alternatives; the XP marks a possible landing site for X-bar movement.)

The study sets to test proposals made by Yuan and Zhao (2005) and Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007) in relation to the issue of parameter resetting in the interpretation of resumptive pronouns by adult English speakers of L2 Chinese. Fiftyfour English speakers of different proficiency levels were asked to correct sentences involving ungrammatical resumptive pronouns in L2 Chinese and their responses were compared with those of a native speaker control group. Findings of the study argue against Yuan and Zhao’s input-driven parameter resetting account. Instead, they support the Interpretability Hypothesis of Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou in assuming that there is a critical period for the accessibility of uninterpretable syntactic features for the construction of mental grammars. It is argued, by extending the unattainability of the uninterpretable features assumption, that once the uninterpretable syntactic features are selected, they become difficult to lose if L2 lacks such uninterpretable features.

Gibson and Fedorenko (2013, The need for quantitative methods in syntax and semantics research, Language and Cognitive Processes 28(2), 88-124) have argued against the continued use of informally collected acceptability judgments as the primary methodology in theoretical syntax and semantics research. We provide further support for their position with data from Mandarin and Turkish-language judgment tasks which examined the acceptability of resumptive pronouns (RPs) in relative clauses. Based on previous studies which relied on informal judgments, we expected that RPs should be permitted in certain types of Mandarin relative clauses, but ungrammatical in comparable Turkish relative clauses. The results failed to replicate this contrast: RPs were more acceptable than expected in Turkish, and less acceptable than expected in Mandarin. Furthermore, the Mandarin Chinese experiment showed an unexpected gradient effect. We argue that these results challenge existing theoretical accounts, support the more widespread adoption of experimental tasks in theoretical linguistics and in second-language research, and consistently support the Filler-Gap Domain complexity ranking as proposed by Hawkins (2004, Efficiency and complexity in grammars, Oxford: Oxford University Press). We use the complexity ranking and its supporting evidence as a case study demonstrating that quantitative data, such as the evidence obtained from formal sentence judgment tasks, are indispensable in the defense or criticism of linguistic theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neste estudo, explorarei a emergência de pronomes resumptivos na fala de uma criança adquirindo o Portugês Brasileiro (PB) como língua nativa. Adoto a hipótese que toma os pronomes resumptivos nas línguas naturais como sendo uma estratégia de último recurso e proponho que se investigue tais elementos na fala da criança como tal. O comportamento da criança neste ponto é crucial para assumirmos que o PB também respeita este que pode ser considerado como um princípio que opera em todas as línguas, ou seja, a estratégia de último recurso aplicada aos pronomes resumptivos faria parte de um conhecimento inato. Concluo o artigo, discutindo as vantagens que as análises aqui realizadas trazem para uma melhor descrição do Português Brasileiro adulto.In this study, I investigate the emergence of resumptive pronouns in the spontaneous production of a child acquiring Brazilian Portuguese as her native language. I adopt a theory of resumptive pronouns in which these elements are taken to be a last resort strategy. The child's behavior in this respect, together with an analysis of resumptive pronouns in adult BP, lead to the conclusion that the Brazilian Portuguese data is in accordance with a last resort analysis of resumptive pronouns, although it may look otherwise on the surface. I assume this last resort nature of resumptives is part of an innate knowledge. I conclude this paper discussing the advantages that the analysis presented here brings to a better description of adult Brazilian Portuguese.

[Display omitted] • Prior work: Speakers do not choose syntactic structures for interlocutors' benefit. • Also prior work: Speakers produce resumptive pronouns to improve acceptability. • We manipulate acceptability & show no effect on resumptive pronoun production. • Our results likely also rule out working memory-based accounts of resumption. • There remains no clear audience design explanation for resumptive pronoun production. Speakers often tailor their speech to the needs of their interlocutors to facilitate comprehension. While such audience design can be observed in the words speakers choose (e.g., using simpler words when talking to children) or the volume of their voice (louder in noisier environments), it has rarely been observed in what syntactic structures speakers use. Consequently, many researchers have concluded that syntactic audience design is impossible. However, there exists a parallel literature in which syntactic audience design is assumed to play a central role. Specifically, English resumptive pronouns (e.g., ... pronouns that nobody knows why people say them ) are puzzling in that, despite being ungrammatical, they are regularly and reliably produced. To account for this, some theories hold that speakers produce resumptive pronouns to improve the acceptability of their utterances. If so, this would be an exceptional case of syntactic audience design. In three experiments, we test this hypothesis by eliciting sentences from speakers while manipulating acceptability. We consistently show no effect of acceptability on rates of resumptive pronoun production, despite successfully manipulating production rates with a comparably sized control manipulation. We conclude that resumptive pronouns are not in fact the result of audience design, and therefore do not constitute a challenge to the idea that syntactic audience design is impossible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the derivation of definite and indefinite relative clauses in Lebanese Arabic. The two types of relative clause are similar in that they require resumptive pronouns and do not exhibit island effects. Based on reconstruction effects, I however argue that definite relatives may be either base-generated or derived by movement, whereas indefinite relatives can only be base-generated.

Hebrew is generally considered a language with grammaticized resumption, in which resumptive pronouns (RPs) and gaps alternate freely in direct object position. The current study investigates whether and how speakers’ acceptability judgments of direct object RPs in Hebrew are affected by the position of the relative clause in the main clause and the modality in which the sentences are presented. A hundred and eight Hebrew speakers completed an acceptability rating survey which included sentences with relative clauses modifying the main clause subject, direct, or indirect object, with either a gap or a resumptive pronoun. Modality of presentation was visual for half of the participants, and auditory for the other half. Results show that Hebrew speakers consistently judge direct object resumptives as less natural than gaps, particularly when sentences are presented in written form. The position of the relative clause does not interact with the acceptability of the RP. We discuss how different processing considerations may have contributed to the pattern of results observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007) propose the Interpretability Hypothesis (IH), according to which uninterpretable features present an insurmountable difficulty in adult second language acquisition. The experimental study supporting the IH examines Greek native speakers’ knowledge of gaps versus resumptive pronouns in English wh-movement. A crucial assumption is that Greek allows resumptives optionally. Alexopoulou and Keller’s (2002, 2007) findings confirm that assumption. In our replication of Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou’s study, we divide Spanish native speakers into those who accept resumptives and those who do not; then we look at their acceptance of gaps and resumptives in English. The results indicate that both groups of advanced learners, those that do and those that don’t have resumptives in their individual grammars, have acquired the ungrammaticality of resumptives in English, although there may be lingering native language effects. The effects of d-linking, animacy, syntactic function of the resumptive/gap (subject vs. object), and presence of the complementizer that are also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do nominalizations mean what they do? I investigate two deverbal nominalizers in Northern Paiute (Uto-Aztecan, Numic: Western United States), -na and -di, which create nominalizations that describe either an event (like the poss-ing gerund in English) or an individual (like agent nominalizations with -er). I propose a syntax and semantics for these deverbal nominalizations that account for their interpretive variability. On the syntax side, I argue that -na and -di overtly realize the nominal functional head that canonically assigns case to possessors when this head takes a vP complement. On the semantics side, I propose that Northern Paiute has operators that abstract over a variable inside nominalizations. This accounts for the meanings that deverbal nominalizations in Northern Paiute have, and it highlights their relationship to nominalization patterns in other languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate idiom reconstruction in the context of sluicing constructions. We demonstrate that some idioms in English are not compatible with resumptive pronouns. On the basis of this observation, we argue that sluicing involves wh-gap dependencies rather than wh-resumptive pronoun dependencies, and that the island amelioration effect of sluicing does not result primarily from the island amelioration effect of resumptive pronouns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [⿢] Provides a detailed discussion of gaps and resumptive pronouns in Welsh unbounded dependencies. [⿢] Highlights problems for transformational approaches. [⿢] Develops an HPSG analysis in which resumptive pronouns are ordinary pronouns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper investigates the controversial morphemes that occur both at the clause level and within the DP in Bantu languages such as Ikalanga, which have been analyzed as "agreement morphology" by some (Baker 2002, Demuth and Harford (1999) and as resumptive/incorporated pronouns by others (Bresnan and Mchombo 1987, Zwart 1997). The paper proposes a unified analysis of this phenomenon, analyzing both clausal and DP-internal occurrences of these morphemes as agreement morphology which holds between the head of an XP and its predicate, or between the head of an XP and its modifiers. In both instances, the agreement relation is instantiated after movement of the relevant category from its base position to a specifier position which enables the moved category to enter into a checking relation (i.e. a spec-head configuration) with another category that has matching features (Chomsky 1995).

Abstract: This paper explores the relation of grammaticality to acceptability through a discussion of the use of resumptive pronouns in spoken English. It is argued that undergeneration by some grammar of observed linguistic phenomena such as these is as serious a problem for theoretical frameworks as overgeneration, and that it has consequences for the way in which grammaticality and acceptability are to be construed. Using the framework of Dynamic Syntax, a theoretical account of relative clauses and anaphora construal is provided from which the use of resumptive pronouns in English emerges as a natural consequence. The fact that examples are considered by native speakers to be unacceptable in neutral contexts is argued to follow from pragmatic effects, explicable from a Relevance Theoretic perspective. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper discusses two types of resumptive pronouns found in Polish relative clauses: (i) adjacent resumptives and (ii) embedded resumptives. It will be argued that adjacent resumptives are truncated forms of the relative operator, whereas embedded resumptives are 'regular' resumptive pronouns found in other languages like Hebrew and Russian. Support for this claim will come from analyzing the differences between adjacent and embedded resumptives, and analyzing the similarities between adjacent resumptives and relative operators. Cross-linguistic data involving the interaction of relative clause formation and resumption, as well as the interaction of cliticization and resumption will provide additional support for the above claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language comprehension and production are generally assumed to use the same representations, but resumption poses a problem for this view: This structure is regularly produced, but judged highly unacceptable. Production-based solutions to this paradox explain resumption in terms of processing pressures, whereas the Facilitation Hypothesis suggests resumption is produced to help listeners comprehend. Previous research purported to support the Facilitation Hypothesis did not test its keystone prediction: that resumption improves accuracy of interpretation. Here, we test this prediction directly, controlling for factors that previous work did not. Results show that resumption in fact hinders comprehension in the same sentences that native speakers produced, a finding which replicated across four high-powered experiments with varying paradigms: sentence-picture matching (N=300), self-paced reading (N=96), visual world eye-tracking (N=96), and multiple-choice comprehension question (N=150). These findings are consistent with production-based accounts, indicating that comprehension and production may indeed share representations, although our findings point toward a limit on the degree of overlap. Methodologically speaking, the findings highlight the importance of measuring interpretation when studying comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]