Georgi colloquium March 5

Doreen Georgi, University of Potsdam, presented “How to account for resumptives in movement chains: insights from Igbo” in the Linguistics colloquium series March 5. An abstract follows.

Abstract:
In this talk I will address the general problem of how we can model the pronunciation of lower chain links when the lower copy is realized in a reduced form such as a resumptive pronoun. There are two main approaches in the literature: BigDP/stranding and spell-out approaches. Both approaches have quite general (conceptual as well as empirical) short-comings, and hence none of them can be considered the standard / widely accepted approach. Van Urk (2018) provides new arguments that favor a spell-out approach that makes use of partial copy deletion. His arguments are based on cross-linguistic patterns of phi-mismatches between the pronounced chain links. In the talk, I will present novel data from my recent (co-authored) work on resumption in Igbo (Benue-Kwa, Nigeria). The phi-mismatch pattern in Igbo is more complex than previously described patterns; in fact, it raises new challenges for a spell-out approach (and also for a BigDP approach) to chain link realization.