LingLunch : Berthold Crysmann

Berthold Crysmann (LLF)
An underspecification approach to Hausa resumption

Within recent work on the treatment of resumption in HPSG, there is growing consensus that resumptive unbounded dependency constructions (=UDCs) (Alotaibi and Borsley, 2013; Borsley, 2010; Crysmann, 2012; Taghvaipour, 2005) should be modeled on a par with gap-type UDCs, using a single feature slash for both types of dependencies, rather than separate features, as proposed by Vaillette (2001a,b). Yet, authors disagree as to where exactly in the grammar the resumptive function of pronominals should be established: while Crysmann (2012, 2015) advances an ambiguity approach that has pronominal synsem objects being ambiguous between a resumptive and an ordinary pronoun use, Borsley (2010); Alotaibi and Borsley (2013), by contrast, treat all pronominals, resumptive or not, as ordinary pronouns and effect their resumptive use by means of tailoring the slash amalgamation principle to potentially include pronominal indices. While their decision provides a straightforward account of McCloskey's generalisation that resumptives always look like the ordinary pronouns of the language, it fails to capture the difference in semantics between ordinary pronominal and resumptive uses (cf. Asudeh, 2004).  In this talk, I shall reexamine the evidence from Hausa and propose to synthesize the approaches put forth by Alotaibi and Borsley (2013) and Crysmann (2012), and propose that the potential for pronominal and resumptive function (including their difference w.r.t. semantics and non-local features) is captured by means of underspecification, yet the decision as to canonical vs. non-canonical use is made at the level of the governing head (Borsley). I shall argue that this division of labour is sufficient to derive the difference in semantics while still providing an answer to McCloskey's generalisation.