The Absence of Islands in Akan: The Role of Resumption

• Published in: Languages (Basel) Vol. 9; no. 4; p. 127
• Main Authors: Korsah, Sampson, Murphy, Andrew
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.04.2024
• Subjects: Akan (African people); Akan language; Analysis; Binding; Cyclicity; islands; Kwa languages; Language; movement; Native language; Relative clauses; resumption; Social aspects; Syntactic islands; Syntactic movement; syntax; Ghana
• ISSN: 2226-471X; 2226-471X
• DOI: 10.3390/languages9040127

The precise nature of Ā-dependencies that terminate in a pronoun has been a long-standing subject of cross-linguistic research. Traditionally, it has been assumed that there are two derivational strategies to form resumptive Ā-dependencies: movement and base generation. Island configurations have played a crucial role in determining which derivational strategy is employed in a given language, as islands effects are expected to arise from dependencies created by movement but not by base generation. The body of cross-linguistic research on resumption has shown that the situation is more complicated once other diagnostics are taken into account, as languages can have mixed resumption profiles. In this paper, we discuss resumption in Ā-dependencies in Akan, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, and illustrate that, despite their general insensitivity to islands, resumptive dependencies also show many classic hallmarks of movement. We situate these findings in the broader context of a general understanding of resumption cross-linguistically and discuss how the conflicting diagnostics might be reconciled with a movement-based analysis.