g., a young native English speaker might say, "This is the girl who she hides when the storm comes"), and also by foreign language learners in ways that do not match the usage of resumptive pronouns in their native languages. That is, while Cantonese (for example) uses resumptive pronouns in more constructions than English, native Cantonese speakers that are learning English have been observed to make resumptive pronoun errors that do not correspond to the resumptive pronoun constructions of Cantonese. Both of these areas of data -- the fact that young native speakers of languages without extensive resumptive pronoun use make resumptive pronoun errors, and the fact that non-native speakers make resumptive pronoun errors that do not correspond with their native language's use of resumptive pronouns -- suggest that resumptive pronouns and resumptive pronoun errors are...

Some have suggested that resumptive pronouns appear to be inherent and innate logical and grammatical constructs, given the degree to which they are used inappropriately by both native and foreign language learners in languages without extensive resumptive pronoun use. Others contend that resumptive pronouns are a peculiarity of the development of certain languages that require additional reinforcement of a subject, and that confusions and errors occur simply out of the confusion of the speaker (foreign or native). Resolving this difference of opinion would require far more empirical research achieved through new research methods that have not yet appeared on the horizon.