ABSTRACT
Resumption is a mechanism available for wh-constructions, which serves to establish a long-distance dependency between a nominal antecedent at the left periphery of a clause and/or a sentence, and a pronominal element inside the sentence, which depends on the antecedent for its interpretation. The chapter focuses on studies of resumption in Arabic constituent questions, restrictive relatives, and topic constructions, since much of the work on the syntax of Arabic within the generative tradition has focused on resumption in those constructions. It examines the interplay between developments in syntactic theory and the empirical facts about resumption across different varieties of Arabic. The chapter discusses the variation in resumption across some Arabic dialects and deals with resumption in Arabic from a historical perspective. The pronominal nature of resumptive elements, a contribution to the study of resumption in Arabic, is also discussed. The chapter concludes with the contributions made by studies of language impairment and other experimental approaches to the syntax of resumption.
