Resumption in Biblical Hebrew Matthew Hewett First Qualifying Paper First Reader: Jason Merchant Second Reader: Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee Department of Linguistics The University of Chicago May 24, 2019 Abstract This paper provides the first synthesized account of resumptive pronouns in two kinds of A-bar depen- dencies in Biblical Hebrew: dislocation constructions and relative clauses. First, with respect to dislocation, this paper argues that two distinct constructions can be empirically distinguished in Biblical Hebrew according to six, cross-linguistically supported tests which diagnose connectivity between the dislocate and host clause. These are referred to as Hanging Topics and Left Dislocates (see Anagnostopoulou et al. 1997; Alexiadou 2017). On the basis of these differences, it is claimed that Hanging Topics are externally Merged in the specifier of a functional projection in the left periphery, here taken to be Top(ic) (see Rizzi 1997). In line with recent proposals by Ott (2014; 2014), Left Dislocates are argued to be elliptical sentence remnants appearing linearly juxtaposed to their host clauses, superficially giving rise to a configuration similar to that of Hanging Topics. This paper argues that the clause hosting the dislocate and the clause hosting the correlate (= resumptive pronoun) are asyndetically coordinated by Koster’s (2000) null operator colon ":P". Ellipsis of the clause hosting the dislocate is then licensed by an E feature on C (Merchant 2001, 2004a). This account predicts a mixed set of connectivity effects, such that certain mismatches will be permitted as long as they are not relevant for the identity calcu- lation in licensing ellipsis. Crucially, it is shown that accounts which posit a movement relationship between the correlate and the dislocate fail to predict certain anti-connectivity effects present in Left Dislocation, most importantly Á-feature mismatches (cf. Grohmann 2003). The second part of the paper addresses the syntax of resumption in relative clauses. The first contribution of this section is to provide the most comprehensive catalogue of the distribution of resumptive pronouns in relative clauses, categorized according to their clausal position and the relative complementizer with which they occur. It is shown that Biblical Hebrew, like Modern Hebrew and Irish, productively employs resumptive pronouns in island and non-island contexts. This empirical survey forms the foundation for the following sec- tion, where it is argued that three functional proposals aimed at accounting for the distribution of resumptive pronouns in optional positions in Biblical Hebrew and in other languages fail to predict the full range of at- tested data. Finally, this paper puts forward a unified theoretical account of resumptive pronouns in relative clauses in Biblical Hebrew whereby resumptive pronouns are uniformly generated independently of their A- bar binders and are bound in-situ (see Merchant 2004b; McCloskey 1990; Safir 1986, 1996). Certain properties traditionally associated with movement which are found in resumption (e.g. reconstruction effects; see Bianchi 2004; Sichel 2014) can instead be accounted for by positing that the resumptive pronoun is a determiner which takes a copy of the relative head as its complement (see Elbourne 2001). This copy undergoes NP-ellipsis under i identity with its antecedent (Guilliot and Malkawi 2006, 2011). Overall, this paper aims to provide a wealth of new empirical data for consideration in the typological and theoretical literature on resumption. Moreover, it provides at least some evidence for McCloskey’s (2002) ob- servation that resumptive pronouns in all languages are regular pronouns and are not special in any way. The accounts proposed herein are compatible with this generalization: in Hanging Topics and relative clauses, re- sumptive pronouns are regular pronouns (possibly derived by NP-ellipsis) which are A-bar bound (possibly directly by their antecedents); in Left Dislocation, resumptive pronouns are regular, anaphoric pronouns. ii Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Background on Biblical Hebrew 4 2.1 Typological and Morphosyntactic Basics . .4 2.1.1 Basic Constituent Order . .4 2.1.2 Oblique Pronouns and Differential Object Marking . .7 2.1.3 Relative clauses . .8 2.2 Corpus of Biblical Hebrew . 12 3 Dislocations in Biblical Hebrew 12 3.1 Introduction and Literature Review . 12 3.2 Biblical Hebrew has both Hanging Topics and Left Dislocates . 19 3.2.1 Diagnostic 1: Phrasal category of the dislocate . 20 3.2.2 Diagnostic 2: Case-mismatches between the dislocate and correlate . 20 3.2.3 Diagnostic 3: Island-sensitivity . 22 3.2.4 Diagnostic 4: Anti-reconstruction effects . 25 3.2.5 Diagnostic 5: ’As for’ phrases . 26 3.2.6 Diagnostic 6: Epithet correlates . 26 3.2.7 Summary of the diagnostics . 28 3.2.8 Excursus on the Diachrony of Dislocates in Biblical Hebrew . 29 3.3 Biblical Hebrew Hanging Topics are clause-externally base generated . 31 3.4 Biblical Hebrew Left Dislocation involves clausal juxtaposition plus ellipsis . 37 3.4.1 Movement analysis of Left Dislocation . 38 3.4.2 Ellipsis analysis of Left Dislocation . 39 3.5 Summary of Biblical Hebrew Dislocations . 47 4 Resumptive Relative Clauses 47 4.1 Preliminaries: Terminology in the relative clause . 47 4.2 Introduction and Literature Review . 48 4.3 Empirical Distribution . 52 iii 4.3.1 Obligatory resumptive pronouns . 53 4.3.2 Obligatory gaps . 53 4.3.3 Subjects . 55 4.3.4 Objects . 59 4.3.5 Locative Adverbials . 61 4.3.6 Summary................................................. 63 4.3.7 Islands . 65 4.4 Motivating Resumption . 67 4.4.1 Proposal 1: Disambiguating the relative head . 68 4.4.2 Proposal 2: Animacy . 70 4.4.3 Proposal 3: Restrictiveness . 72 4.4.4 Summary of functional proposals . 73 4.4.5 Weak Crossover Configurations . 74 4.5 Modeling Resumption . 75 4.5.1 Two Models for Relative Clauses . 75 4.5.2 Evidence for relative clauses with base-generated null operators . 77 4.5.3 Reconstruction and Possible Evidence for Head-Raising Relatives . 78 4.6 Summary..................................................... 88 5 Conclusion and Outlook 88 6 Appendix 1: Left Dislocation 91 6.1 Accusative DP dislocate with D(P) correlate . 91 6.2 Accusative DP dislocate with PP correlate . 93 6.3 PP dislocate with PP correlate . 93 6.4 PP Dislocate with Loc Adv Correlate . 94 7 Appendix 2: Hanging Topics 96 7.1 Nominative DP dislocate with D(P) correlate . 96 7.2 Nominative DP dislocate with PP correlate . 97 8 Nominative DP dislocate with Loc Adv correlate 97 9 Appendix 3: Pašer Relative Clauses, "Optionally Resumptive" Positions 98 iv 9.1 Pašer Highest Subject Resumptive Pronouns . 98 9.2 Pašer Embedded Subject Resumptive Pronouns . 101 9.3 Pašer Highest Object Resumptive Pronouns . 102 9.4 Pašer Embedded Object Resumptive Pronouns . 110 9.5 Pašer Highest Locative Adverbial Resumptive Pronouns . 112 9.6 Pašer Embedded Locative Adverbial Resumptive Pronouns . 113 10 Appendix 4: šeC- Relative Clauses, "Optionally Resumptive" Positions 113 10.1 šeC- Highest Subject Resumptive Pronouns . 113 10.2 šeC- Highest Object Resumptive Pronouns . 113 10.3 šeC- Highest Locative Adverbial Resumptive Pronoun . 114 11 Appendix 5: Relative Clauses, "Optionally Resumptive" Positions 114 ; 11.1 Highest Subject Resumptive Pronouns . 114 ; 11.2 Embedded Subject Resumptive Pronouns . 114 ; 11.3 Highest Object Resumptive Pronouns . 114 ; 11.4 Highest Locative Adverbial Resumptive Pronouns . 115 ; 12 Appendix 6: Pašer Purpose Infinitivals 115 List of Tables 1 Differential object marker Pet with pronominal clitics (Van der Merwe et al. 2017: 282) . .8 2 Biblical Hebrew complementizer counts adapted from Holmstedt (2016) . 11 3 Diagnostics for distinguishing Hanging Topics from Left Dislocates in Biblical Hebrew . 29 4 Biblical Hebrew Dislocation Statistics . 29 5 Distribution of Resumptive Pronouns and Gaps in Biblical Hebrew Relative Clauses . 64 6 Resumptive Pronoun and Gap Statistics in Biblical Hebrew Relative Clauses . 64 7 Frequency of Resumptive Pronouns in ’Optionally Resumptive’ Positions . 65 8 Animacy in Pašer relative clauses with highest object resumptive pronouns . 71 9 Animacy in Pašer relative clauses with highest subject resumptive pronouns . 71 10 Interpretive contrasts between optional and obligatory resumptive pronouns in non-island con- texts (adapted from Sichel 2014: 663) . 79 v 11 Interpretive contrasts between optional and obligatory RPs in Modern and Biblical Hebrew . 82 vi List of Abbreviations 11 st person P plural 22 nd person P/PP preposition/prepositional phrase 33 rd person PFV perfective ACC accusative PRES present AUX auxiliary PTCP participle C complementizer Q question CS construct state R realis CL clitic REFL reflexive COLL collective RP resumptive pronoun D/DP determiner/determiner phrase S singular D dual V verb DAT dative EXIST existential F feminine GEN genitive IMP imperative IPFV imperfective IR irrealis INF infinitive JUS jussive M masculine N/NP noun/noun phrase NEG negative NOM nominative vii 1 Introduction The term "resumption" refers to the phenomenon in which a pronominal element occurs in the variable position of an unbounded A-bar dependency (Rouveret 2011; see also Sells 1984 and McCloskey 2017b). Re- sumptive pronouns are found throughout the world’s languages in a variety A-bar dependencies, including relative clauses, wh-questions, dislocation constructions, comparative clauses, clefts, and "tough-movement" constructions. In Biblical Hebrew, two configurations in particular utilize resumptive pronouns: (i) dislocation constructions (alternatively referred to as casus pendens, extraposition, and left dislocation, inter alia), as in (1), and (ii) relative clauses, as in (2). Resumptive pronouns are boxed throughout. @ @ (1) kî Pot¯ -ô1 k -hayyôm tims. Pûn Pot¯ -ô1 because ACC-3MS as-today find.IPFV.2MP ACC-3MS ’Because him1–even today you shall find him1.’ (1 Sam 9.13) @ a e a a @ (2)n el¯ kâ Pah. rê [P lohîm¯ P h. erîm]¯ 1 P šer lo¯P y daQta-¯ m1 go.JUS.1P after gods.MP other.MP C NEG know.PFV.2MS-3MP.ACC ’Let us go after other gods who you don’t know (lit.