ABSTRACT
This chapter substantiates McCloskey’s (2005) observation on the “Janus-like nature” of resumptive pronouns. Taking the properties of Welsh and Irish relativization as a point of departure, the author argues that the linking of resumptive pronouns to the periphery is a strictly narrow-syntactic process, which, like the gap/resumptive divide, can entirely be subsumed under familiar derivational Principles and constraints and is triggered by the uninterpretable features of resumptive pronouns, analyzed as φ-projections, and of the c-commanding complementizers. Resumptive linking reduces to non-local Agree, without Move being involved. On the other hand, resumptive dependencies give rise to reconstruction effects, which can also be detected in structures with different derivational histories, as is the case of intrusive dependencies involving a strong island. It appears that, in all structures, the internal make-up of the pronouns involved is exclusively responsible for the various reconstruction options. The overall result of this study is that the specific way pronouns are linked to the periphery (via a probe-goal relation or via binding at the interface) plays no role in their reconstruction properties, the fact that they have an internal structure plays no role in their distribution. This state of affairs has interesting implications concerning the “semantic blindness” of syntactic operations (Uriagereka 2002).
