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LINGUIST List 20.2530

Fri Jul 17 2009

Qs: Quantifier Fronting and Resumptive Preposing

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        1.    Ian Mackenzie, Quantifier Fronting and Resumptive Preposing
Message 1: Quantifier Fronting and Resumptive Preposing
Date: 17-Jul-2009
From: Ian Mackenzie <i.e.mackenziencl.ac.uk>
Subject: Quantifier Fronting and Resumptive Preposing
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Hi,

I was just wondering whether quantifier fronting and/or resumptive
preposing are documented in languages other than modern Romance. The first
of these phenomena consists in moving a quantified or negative argument to
the kind of position that a fronted contrastive focus would occupy. The
second is analogous, but this time the moved item refers back to something
just mentioned. In both cases, there is subject-verb inversion (if an overt
subject is actually present) and there is no co-referential pronoun as you
find with clitic left dislocation. So, typical examples might be something
like the Spanish sentences below (similar examples appear to exist in the
other Romance null subject languages).

Algo sabrá tu padre.
Something your father must know
'Your father must know something.'

Algun caso habrás tenido, no?
Some case you must have had, no?
'You must have had some case, no?'

A nadie vimos.
Nobody we saw.
'We didn't see anybody'

Lo mismo dice Pedro
The same says Pedro.
'Pedro says the same thing.'

A esta chica contrataron.
This girl they hired.
'They hired this girl.'

I was wondering whether anyone knew of any data or work on these phenomena
in languages outside the Romance group. Alternatively, if there are any
native speakers of languages that have one or both of these phenomena, I'd
be interested to hear from you.

Saludos
Ian Mackenzie
Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language Science Newcastle University

Linguistic Field(s): Syntax
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