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Some notes on the ‘specificity effects’of optional resumptive pronouns

Abstract

This paper discusses ‘specificity effects’ (Doron 1982) in the light of two recent approaches to resumption: Boeckx’s doubling analysis and Adger & Ramchand’s Agree-chain analysis. Boeckx analyses resumptive pronouns as functional heads encoding specificity; his approach cannot account for certain allowed ‘nonspecific’ functional readings (Sharvit 1999) nor for indirect object resumptive clitics, which lack specificity effects. Adger & Ramchand exploit unadorned individual variables and generally predict only specific/wide scope readings for movement relatives as well as for resumptive relatives. In general, any strict mapping between resumption and specificity fails to account for the fact that Hebrew gap relatives too allow for a specific interpretation; as a possible solution, I speculate that two different kinds of specificity may be relevant.

Abstract

This paper discusses ‘specificity effects’ (Doron 1982) in the light of two recent approaches to resumption: Boeckx’s doubling analysis and Adger & Ramchand’s Agree-chain analysis. Boeckx analyses resumptive pronouns as functional heads encoding specificity; his approach cannot account for certain allowed ‘nonspecific’ functional readings (Sharvit 1999) nor for indirect object resumptive clitics, which lack specificity effects. Adger & Ramchand exploit unadorned individual variables and generally predict only specific/wide scope readings for movement relatives as well as for resumptive relatives. In general, any strict mapping between resumption and specificity fails to account for the fact that Hebrew gap relatives too allow for a specific interpretation; as a possible solution, I speculate that two different kinds of specificity may be relevant.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword vii
  4. Some issues in the theory of resumption: 1
  5. Part I. Syntactic uniformity/diversity of resumption
  6. Resumptive pronouns, A-binding,and levels of representations in Irish 65
  7. Towards a unified theory of resumption 121
  8. The limits of resumption in Welsh wh -dependencies 189
  9. Last resort and no resort: 223
  10. Building and interpreting nonthematic A-positions 241
  11. Part II. Issues in the semantics of resumptive pronouns and epithets
  12. On the syntax and semantics of resumptive pronouns 289
  13. Some notes on the ‘specificity effects’of optional resumptive pronouns 319
  14. Bare resumptives 343
  15. Resumptives, movement and interpretation 367
  16. Weak versus strong resumption 395
  17. Index of languages 425
  18. Index of notions 427
Resumptive Pronouns at the Interfaces
This chapter is in the book Resumptive Pronouns at the Interfaces
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.5.08bia

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword vii
  4. Some issues in the theory of resumption: 1
  5. Part I. Syntactic uniformity/diversity of resumption
  6. Resumptive pronouns, A-binding,and levels of representations in Irish 65
  7. Towards a unified theory of resumption 121
  8. The limits of resumption in Welsh wh -dependencies 189
  9. Last resort and no resort: 223
  10. Building and interpreting nonthematic A-positions 241
  11. Part II. Issues in the semantics of resumptive pronouns and epithets
  12. On the syntax and semantics of resumptive pronouns 289
  13. Some notes on the ‘specificity effects’of optional resumptive pronouns 319
  14. Bare resumptives 343
  15. Resumptives, movement and interpretation 367
  16. Weak versus strong resumption 395
  17. Index of languages 425
  18. Index of notions 427
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