Resumptive pronouns and asymmetric coordination in Old English
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Date
2017
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Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Abstract
Description
In this paper, we have looked at one type of asymmetric coordination, namely, coordination with resumptive pronouns. We have identified three factors responsible for the distribution of resumptives in coordination, that is, the syntactic role of case, the placement of resumptives, and structural complexity, and tested them against the corpus data. An examination of extensive body of the data allowed us to draw a few conclusions. First, although all the factors have some justification in the distribution of resumptives in coordination, they do not seem to be of equal value. Structural complexity seems to be less important in this respect. Second, case changes the syntactic role of pronouns but only in the initial position with non-nominative resumptives; nominative resumptives do not perform this function. Third, resumptives in the middle of the conjunct are also adequately represented. They do not change the role but represent a violation of the CSC constraint found in many other languages with resumption.
This allows us to subsume Old English under the same group as Hebrew and, perhaps, Zurich German. This fact in turn supports the view that resumption was an important syntactic phenomenon in the history of English. Finally, all the three factors contribute to the distribution of resumptives in coordination but in each case the role of resumptives differs. For example, not all resumptives change the syntactic role of pronouns, they do not have to appear only in the initial position in the second conjunct, they can appear in simple structures.
This means that the factors should be considered jointly rather than separately.
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Citation
Current developments in English historical linguistics : studies in honour of Rafał Molencki, ed. A. Kijak, A. M. Łęcki, J. Nykiel, Katowice 2017, s. 35-50
ISBN
978-83-226-3310-6