Resumptive pronouns (is that the right term?) in relative clauses

[pne]

An interesting construction I came across just now here: the pastor was Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who's said some things that a lot of people don't want a President who believes.

That's the sort of thing that makes me wonder whether English wouldn't be "better" if it had mandatory, or at least optional, resumptive pronouns.

Comments

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

I've come across some instances in colloquial English where resumptive pronouns are developing, but I can't for the life of me think of an example... I'll have to see if I can dig one up.

But I find the sentence you gave to be grammatical, but just barely - it's so awkward that I wouldn't have thought anyone would ever actually produce it. Certainly no-one would use a sentence like that in spoken English.

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Ah. The commenter above me had one:

"I like it because I feel like it's something that I really know what means"

This doesn't have a resumptive pronoun, but I have heard similar sentences with the resumptive it, so: "I like it because I feel like it's something that I really know what it means". In fact, I would accept the latter and reject the former.