Truly intrusive: Resumptive pronominals in questions and relative clauses

The paper argues that true or grammatical resumption arises through the generalisation of intrusive resumption, a resumptive strategy available in most grammars as a last resort device to overcome processing complexity. Intrusive resumptive structures involve mixed chains, specified for movement, thus, incurring processing costs associated with movement, but in which the involvement of a pronominal, providing an argument locally, gives rise to an anaphoric resolution of the dependency. Generalising the resumptive strategy involves shifting from such mixed chains to chains where the movement option is cancelled altogether and, complexity associated with movement is dispensed with. Technically, this amounts to dispensing with the Op feature of C. The hypothesis immediately explains why variation in resumption is associated with C rather than the pronominal. A crucial trigger in this process is the presence of rich agreement in a grammar in two areas: (i) the association of C of relative clauses with nominal features that enter in agreement relations with the relativised element and (ii) the existence of pronominal clitics that can be (re-)analysed as agreement features on verbal forms.