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Re: Resumptive pronoun?

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Tuesday, June 26, 2001, 21:59
D. Tse wrote:
>If I have a sentence, literally "The shirt, the one that you wear, it is >green", or "The island, the place at which there is a tree, is over there", >are "the one that" and "the place that" resumptive pronouns or not?
In these exs., I don't think so; they strike me more as "clauses in apposition"-- though it could well be that, translated into some conlang, they would be resumptive pronouns. We get them in English in a few odd dialects/idiolects, or sometimes when the sentence is long and the syntax gets a little tangled up: "The shirt, which you're wearing it, is green"; "the island, which there's a tree on it, is over there"; "the man, which I gave him the money, wasted it on lottery tickets". Seems to me these are most likely to occur in languages whose relative marker (1)is invariant, serving only to indicate that its clause modifies the preceding, or (2) can only relativize certain grammatical roles. Hebrew IIRC, and Kash definitely, are examples of #1: (Kash) halo re yu halimbe, yakundroshe lit. sarong REL it-(neut)acc you-wear, it-green 'the sarong (that) you're wearing is green' -- except that in practice, a neut. object pron. can be omitted; with anim.obj.: sininji re yan makapak epak, cakróp lit. young-man REL him i-hit fist, fall-on-face 'the boy (whom) I slugged fell on his face'; kash re matraka punani... lit. person REL I-buy house-his.... 'the man whose house I bought....'; kash re ne mavele toyeni.... lit. man REL him-dat I-give money-(the) ... 'the man to whom I gave the money....' Indonesian is an example of #2-- the relative _yang_ can only be the subj. or obj. of its clause: baju yang di/pakai/nya itu, hijau 'the shirt (lit. which is worn by him) is green'; orang yang membeli rumahku... 'the man who bought my house....' vs. orang yang ku/jual rumah/ku kepada/nya 'the man to whom I sold my house....' lit. man REL I-sell house-my to-him.... (this last may not be acceptable in grammar-book terms! but I seem to recall hearing it a lot).

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