shadow pronoun

English

Examples
That is the shirt that she sewed a button onto it.

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

shadow pronoun (plural shadow pronouns)

1. (grammar) Synonym of resumptive pronoun
   • 1980, Linguistic Inquiry - Volume 11, Issues 2-4, page 367:

     Perlmutter proposes that all chopping rules are rules that leave a shadow pronoun subsequently deleted.

   • 1980, Saadun Ismail Suaieh, Aspects of Arabic Relative Clauses, page 231:

     Perlmutter (1972) proposes that all rules which move constituents over variables be considered "copying " rules. He further argues that if there is a rule which deletes the "shadow pronoun", i.e., the pronoun left behind by the copying rule, this Shadow Deletion rule will be sensitive to island constraints.

   • 1989, James Milroy, Regional Variation in British English Syntax, page 46:

     Shadow pronouns are very frequent in spoken Scottish English but are also found in many varieties of informal English, for example in Ireland, England and the United States.

   • 2004, Reineke Bok-Bennema, Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002, page 164:

     The crucial distinction is not subject clitic versus object clitic, but shadow pronoun versus free anaphor.

Related terms

• shadow deletion
• shadow pronoun hypothesis