Resumption Strategies Research Articles

Resumption in focus(-raising)

Hungarian focus-raising constructions had traditionally been analyzed as instances of long-distance movement (É. Kiss, 1987; Marácz, 1987; Horvath, 1995, 1998; Lipták, 1998). Recently, new empirical evidence (Gervain, 2005) has shown that while some speakers do indeed derive the construction by movement, others use a resumptive strategy instead. The current paper investigates the exact nature of this resumptive dependency, asking whether the resumptive is pronominal or variable-like. Using islands, strong crossover effects, reconstruction and parasitic gap licensing as diagnostic tests, it is shown that resumptives in Hungarian FR are derivationally not traces, since they do not result from movement, but they are variables, requiring local A’-binding.

The Interpretability Hypothesis: evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition

The second language acquisition (SLA) literature reports numerous studies of proficient second language (L2) speakers who diverge significantly from native speakers despite the evidence offered by the L2 input. Recent SLA theories have attempted to account for native speaker/non-native speaker (NS/NNS) divergence by arguing for the dissociation between syntactic knowledge and morpho(pho)nology. In particular, Lardiere (1998), Prévost and White (2000), and Goad and White (2004) claim that highly proficient learners have knowledge of the abstract syntactic properties of the language but occasionally fail to associate them with the correct morphological or phonological forms. On the other hand, theories that support partial availability of Universal Grammar (UG) (Tsimpli and Roussou 1991; Hawkins and Chan, 1997) argue for a problem in the syntax: while UG principles and operations are available in SLA, the formal features of the target language that are not instantiated in the L1 or have a different setting, cause learnability problems. This article discusses acquisitional data in the light of the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli and Mastropavlou, 2007), which is a reformulation of the SLA theory suggested by Tsimpli and Roussou (1991) in minimalist terms. It is argued that a minimalist approach to SLA can be implemented to specify the status of the features that are least accessible to re-setting in the SLA process, given (1) constraints on their learnability and (2), their setting in the L1 grammar. The phenomenon discussed concerns the use of the resumptive strategy in wh- subject and object extraction by intermediate and advanced Greek learners of English. It is proposed that the acceptability rate of pronouns in the extraction site is conditioned by the Logical Form (LF) interpretability of the features involved in the derivation. Hence, the interpretable features of animacy and discourse-linking are hypothesized to be involved in the analysis of English pronouns by Greek L2 learners, while the first language (L1) specification of resumptive pronouns as clusters of uninterpretable Case and Agreement features resists resetting.

Turkish copy-raising and A-chain locality

This paper presents evidence from Turkish Raising Constructions that argues that A-chains should potentially terminate in a pronominal element. This is motivated by the possibility of raising from finite clauses in some varieties of Turkish. However, these Raising constructions do exhibit Specified Subject Condition effects, arguing for a theory of the locality of movement that dissociates the prohibition against raising from finite clauses from the prohibition against crossing a specified subject. I argue that Rizzi's (1990) Relativized Minimality approach achieves this separation as a consequence of separate conditions on formal licensing and chain locality. In particular, I propose that Turkish Raising constructions involve an A-chain whose tail is a silent pronominal (pro). Given that this type of Raising leaves a pronominal copy, neither Principle A of the Binding Theory, nor the ECP can be involved (as these apply to only [-pronominal] elements). However, if antecedent government is taken to be a property of chains, as Rizzi proposes, then locality will correctly be enforced in these Copy-Raising cases. This approach is extended to Exceptional Case Marking/Subject to Object Raising constructions, and provides an argument for a Subject to Object Raising analysis. I conclude by briefly comparing the resumptive pronoun strategy in A- and A′-dependencies. From a cross-linguistic perspective, it appears that both allow for a relaxation of ECP effects as well as the mitigation of locality to varying degrees.

Functional Architecture and Wh-Movement: Irish as a Case in Point

This article sketches a novel approach to the phenomenon traditionally referred to as complementizer variation in Irish, and provides an alternative analysis to the standard one proposed by McCloskey (1990). It is argued that the two variants of the particle surfacing in Ā-constructions are not in fact complementizersper se,but the head of a Focus projection (FP), whose specifier provides an escape hatch forwh-phrases. FP interacts with C in two different ways, and depending on which of the options apply, F surfaces in two variants: (i) F incorporates to C, or (ii) FP raises to [Spec, CP]. The particle traditionally analysed as a resumptive strategy complementizer constitutes a case of (i), and the one traditionally analysed as a movement strategy complementizer is a case of (ii). It is shown how this approach avoids some serious empirical problems posed by the previous analysis of the phenomenon. It is furthermore argued that the process underlying successive cyclicwh-movement in fact involves covert successive pied-piping of CPs, where covert pied-piping is understood as overt pied-piping of the features of CP.