resumptive pronouns

[Ash Asudeh]

Mehran,

It is actually typologically common for resumptive pronouns to be allowed
in questions. The commonly held assumption that resumptives are somehow
fundamentally related to relativization stems from two factors. First,
Chomsky (1982) attempted to relate resumption to relativization, thus
starting a research program in this direction. Second, much of the initial
work on resumption in generative grammar was on Semitic (particularly
Hebrew), in which it does seem more difficult to construct grammatical
examples of resumptives in wh-questions.

However, even in Hebrew it turns out to be possible, especially after
complementizers (thus avoiding a that-trace effect) and with
"which"-questions in certain dialects. Sells (1984) offers an excellent
discussion of the whole relative clause/wh-question issue in resumption
and would be a good starting point.

To answer your actual question, though, here are some references for
resumption in wh-questions, beside Sells (1984) which also discusses these
cases: Irish (McCloskey 1979, 1990), Welsh (Willis 2000 contains a good
selection of references on Welsh resumption, although he doesn't talk much
about wh-questions), Igbo (Goldsmith 1981), Swedish (Zaenen, Engdahl and
Maling 1981, Engdahl 1985), Palauan (Georgopolous 1991), and Hebrew
(Sharvit 1999, Falk 2002).

I'm currently investigating the question with respect to Farsi for my
dissertation. I suspect that maybe you're looking at Farsi too?

Hope that helped!
Ash

On Sun, 29 Sep 2002, Mehran A Taghvaipour wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Does anyone know any language in which resumptive pronouns are allowed in
> wh-questions?
>
> Regards
> Mehran
>
>
>
>
> Mehran A Taghvaipour (http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~matagh)
> Graduate Student
> Language and Linguistics Department
> University of Essex
> Colchester
> CO4 3SQ
> UK
>
>
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