Abstract

This talk uses the empirical phenomenon of resumption as a lens to examine the design of grammar. I present a general hypothesis called the Resource Sensitivity Hypothesis (RSH), which places a certain specific constraint on the language system. I demonstrate that various cross-theoretical proposals can be reduced to RSH . Based on RSH , I develop the Resource Management Theory of Resumption (RMTR), which treats resumption as irreducibly a problem of semantic composition. I show how RMTR , together with a certain constraint-based syntactic mechanism, achieves a unification of apparently heterogeneous grammatically licensed resumptive pronouns. I also show certain correct consequences of RMTR and their implications for the syntax-semantics interface and grammatical architecture. Time permitting, I will also show how RMTR achieves a further unification between resumptive pronouns in unbounded dependencies and copy pronouns in copy raising; both of these phenomena are, at least pre-theoretically, instances of resumption.