Irish gaps and resumptive pronouns in HPSG

Abstract

Unbounded dependency constructions in Irish, such as relative clauses, can be made with both gaps, as in (1), and resumptive pronouns, as in (2) (examples from (McCloskey 1979)):

          (1)  an   fear  a    dúirt  mé  a   shíl          mé  a    beadh       _— ann
                 the man AL  said   I      AL thought  I      AL  would-be _— there
                 'the man that I said that I thought would be there'

          (2)  an  t-úrscéal ar  mheas   mé gur thuig            mé é
                 the novel      AN thought I     GO  understood I     it
                 'the novel that I thought I understood'

This paper will sketch an HPSG treatment of such constructions and their interactions with the distribution of the sentence-initial particles GO, AL, and AN. We focus particularly on relative clauses and constituent questions but believe that the same analysis can be extended to other gap and resumptive constructions. We analyze resumptives with a nonlocal feature RESUMP which is propagated like the SLASH feature used for gaps. This is supported by the existence of a particle pattern that marks intermediate clauses in resumptive dependencies. We also discuss some exceptional particle patterns associated with bare NP adverbials and shown how they can be incorporated into the analysis, though certain unresolved problems remain.

References

McCloskey, J. (1979). Transformational Syntax and Model-Theoretic Semantics: A Case Study in Modern Irish. Dordrecht: Reidel.