trace pronoun

[Barbara Need]

>>The following seems unnatural to me because the pronoun HIM has not been
>>deleted:
>>
>>FORT BRAGG -- A national organization that fights for the rights of
>>homosexual service members has come to the defense of a Fort Bragg soldier
>>whose superiors refuse to let him resign. [Associated Press, Durham, NC,
>>HERALD, 2/16/02, B1]
>>
>>Do YOU have an obligatory object deletion in this syntactic environment?
>~~~~~~~~~
>I don't.  I think HIM is the subject of [to] resign.  OTOH it _may_ be
>omitted.
>

I don't either. '... whose superiors refuse to let resign' is ungrammatical
for me. I do get, '... who superiors refuse to let resign'. That is fine,
and the version with the pronoun is odd.

Do those of you with obligatory deletion also have it in _His superiors
refuse to let resign_? That is the basic sentence, I think. And I think it
is ungrammatical.

Barbara Need
UChicago--Linguistics