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Resumption, Movement, and Derivational Economy
- Linguistic Inquiry
- The MIT Press
- Volume 32, Number 3, Summer 2001
- pp. 371-403
- Article
- Additional Information
This article investigates the interaction between resumption and movement. Lebanese Arabic distinguishes between true resumption, where a pronoun or an epithet phrase is related to an A-antecedent via Bind, and apparent resumption, where the pronoun or the epithet phrase is related to its A-antecedent via Move. Only apparent resumption displays reconstruction effects for scope and binding. As resumptives, strong pronouns and epithet phrases cannot be related to a quantificational antecedent unless they occur inside islands. We account for this Obviation Requirement as follows: (a) (true) resumption is a last resort device, (b) strong pronouns and epithet phrases in apparent resumption contexts are generated as appositive modifiers of a DP, which is fronted to an A-position, and (c) appositive modifiers are interpreted as independent clauses. Obviation is reduced to the inability of quantifiers to bind a pronominal element across sentential boundaries.