bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation
Authors: Milroy James , Milroy Lesley
Published: December 2008

This paper is concerned with the social mechanisms of linguistic change, and we begin by noting the distinction drawn by Bynon (1977) between two quite different approaches to the study of linguistic change. The first and more idealized, associated initially with traditional nineteenth century historical linguistics, involves the study of successive ‘states of the language’, states reconstructed by the application of comparative techniques to necessarily partial historical records. Generalizations (in the form of laws) about the relationships between these states may then be made, and more recently the specification of ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ processes of change has been seen as an important theoretical goal.
Two notes on the theory of definiteness
Authors: Declerck Renaat
Published: December 2008

The terms definite and indefinite, when used in relation to NPs, can be handled in two different ways. One can treat definiteness as a formal (syntactico-morphological) category and make use of the syntactic features [±definite], as in Chomsky (1965). One can also go into the question of how definite and indefinite NPs are used, i.e. the question of when and why a (formally) definite NP is preferred to an indefinite one, or vice versa. If we take the latter approach, we are investigating definiteness as a semantico-pragmatic category.
Arabic root and pattern morphology without tiers
Authors: Hudson Grover
Published: December 2008

This paper is an argument for the constraint on grammars known as the ‘true generalization condition’ (Hooper, 1976:13): all rules express generalizations true for all surface forms. I make this condition fully explicit by interpreting it to mean the prohibition of the three transformational rule-types: deletion, movement and feature-changing. The argument takes the form of a comparison of a recent autosegmental analysis of the intricate facts of Arabic root and pattern verb stem morphology with an alternative which observes the condition. I hope to show how the latter analysis in every empirical aspect is equivalent to the former in its claims about Arabic, and significantly differs, as the result of observing the true generalization condition, in its lack of numerous un-empirical claims made in the autosegmental analysis. In so far as both have descriptive adequacy, the analysis governed by the true generalization condition, termed ‘non-transformational’, has also explanatory adequacy in the sense of Chomsky, 1964: 28–9, since it is closely determined, or selected, by the true generalization condition.
The syntax of English genitive constructions
Authors: Lyons Christopher
Published: December 2008

As is well known, English has two genitive or possessive constructions, the ‘proposed’ and the ‘postposed’, exemplified in (1).

In each case we have an NP, with a head N (book, office, dog, house, plants) modified by a possessive expression (John's, a man's, mine, etc.). This expression is itself an NP in the genitive Case, and I shall refer to it as the ‘genitive phrase’. By contrast with other familiar languages more highly inflected than English, genitive Case is hot marked by an inflection on the head of a genitive phrase, but by the clitic ’s, which is attached right at the end of the phrase. The exception is where the genitive phrase is not a full NP but a personal pronoun, in which case we get an inflected form (irregular in pattern) as in these other languages: I - my/mine, he - his, etc. These possessive forms of pronouns have almost identical distribution to that of full NPs in the genitive (there are some differences which I shall point to below), and so it seems clear that they are genitives, despite the morphological difference; personal pronouns are highly irregular morphologically anyway, and not only in English. This is assumed in all recent work I know of, and I shall take it to be uncontroversial.
On the naturalness of stop consonant voicing
Authors: Westbury John R. , Keating Patricia A.
Published: December 2008

A long recognized problem for linguistic theory has been to explain why certain sounds, sound oppositions, and sound sequences are statistically preferred over others among languages of the world. The formal theory of markedness, developed by Trubetzkoy and Jakobson in the early 1930's, and extended by Chomsky and Halle (1968), represents an attempt to deal with this problem. It is at least implicit in that theory that sounds are rare when (and because) they are marked, and common when (and because) they are not. Whether sounds are marked or unmarked depends – in the latter version of the theory, particularly – upon the ‘intrinsic content’ of acoustic and articulatory features which define them. There was, however, no substantive attempt among early proponents of the theory to show what it was about the content of particular features and feature combinations that caused them to be marked, and others not.
A non-linear analysis of vowel-zero alternations in Polish
Authors: Spencer Andrew
Published: December 2008

Gussmann (1980) has presented an analysis of Polish morphophonemics within the framework of SPE (Chomsky & Halle, 1968). His treatment appeals extensively to underlying representations containing segments which never appear in surface representations. He justifies this use of absolute neutralization with the claim that other rules of Polish phonology appeal to such underlying forms. Rubach (1984) has reanalysed much of Gussmann's description within the framework of Kiparsky's (1982) Lexical Phonology, retaining the analysis of the neutralized segments and even adding to the inventory of abstract elements. The arguments presented by both scholars are a paradigm of elegance and ingenuity, representing generative phonological analysis at its best. However, the considerable reliance they put on abstract underlying representations, morphologically conditioned rules, extrinsic rule ordering and other devices which give rise to a high degree of opacity arouses suspicion. For this reason I have sought to re-examine some of their material within a more ‘concrete’ interpretation of Lexical Phonology, making use of recent ideas from theories of non-linear phonology and theories of allomorphy.
Prepositional phrases as subjects and objects
Authors: Jaworska Ewa
Published: December 2008

The positions of subject and object in simple active sentences, and object of a preposition are normally filled by NP's but they can also be filled by PP's. There are reasons for analyzing such PP's as just PP's and not as PP's embedded in NP's. Yet such an analysis appears to be problematic for the analysis of raising and passive sentences assumed within the government-binding (GB) framework, which is formulated with exclusive reference to NP's. Assuming that the basic mechanisms at work in sentences with PP's in typical NP positions are identical to those in sentences with NP's, PP's must sometimes require Case to avoid a violation of the Case Filter. It is possible to incorporate this idea into the GB framework given a particular view of Case and Case assignment, and a revised Case Filter. The analysis receives some further support from a range of related data.
Hierarchies and the choice of left conjuncts (with particular attention to English)
Authors: Allan Keith
Published: December 2008

Over the last decade or so, hierarchies such as the animacy hierarchy, the personal hierarchy, the case hierarchy, the definiticity and referentiality hierarchies and so forth have been identified as determinants of constituent order. It is my intention in this paper to review the set of hierarchies and rank them as determinants of NP sequencing in English. I shall from time to time compare and contrast the effect of a hierarchy in other languages with what we find in English; but it remains to be seen whether the ranking which obtains for English has a wider application: I make noa prioriclaim that it does. The hierarchies and families of hierarchies are ranked as follows, from the most powerful determinant to the least:

(1) the familiarity hierarchy;

(2) the topic < comment, given < new hierarchies;

(3) the universal sequencing conventions;

(4) the definiticity and referentiality hierarchies;

(5) the personal, social status, and role hierarchies;

(6) the dominant descriptor hierarchies;

(7) the formal hierarchies.
Branching structure within the syllable
Authors: Fudge Erik
Published: December 2008

Arguments about constituency in syntax can often be settled by such methods as testing whether conjoining is possible, or whether a particular string can be moved as a single constituent by a transformational rule. In view of the isomorphism which has been noted between syntactic structures and phonological structures (cf. Clements & Keyser, 1983:25–26; the notion of ‘structural analogy’ in Anderson & Durand, 1986:3; and most notably the isomorphism pointed out between Sentence and Syllable by Kurylowicz, 1949), one might wonder whether such means are available for settling analogous arguments in phonology. It appears that they are not: in this area conjoining does not occur, while movement rules are either not recognized at all, or restricted to those accounting for processes of metathesis, which would normally be taken to be local transformations operating on single segments (cf. Vincent, 1986:318, fn. 3). What types of arguments, then, ARE available for settling questions of phonological constituency? This article attempts to explore some aspects of this question.
Colour terms in Russian: reflections of typological constraints in a single language
Authors: Corbett Greville , Morgan Gerry
Published: December 2008

One of the milestones in typological studies is Berlin & Kay's (1969) account of basic colour terms, which has produced a steady stream of research of various types. Berlin & Kay summarized their work as follows.

In sum, our two major findings indicate that the referents for the basic color terms of all languages appear to be drawn from a set of eleven universal perceptual categories, and these categories become encoded in the history of a given language in a partially fixed order (1969: 4–5).
Coordination and grammatical relations
Authors: Hudson Richard
Published: December 2008

The most serious recent work on the theory of coordination has probably been done in terms of three theories of grammatical structure: Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG–see especially Gazdar, 1981; Gazdaret al., 1982; 1985; Saget al., 1985; Schachter & Mordechay, 1983), Categorial Grammar (CG–see especially Steedman, 1985; Dowty, 1985) and Transformational Grammar (TG–notably Williams, 1978, 1981; Neijt, 1979; van Oirsouw, 1985, 1987). Each of these approaches is different in important respects: for instance, according to whether or not they allow deletion rules, and according to the kinds of information which they allow to be encoded in syntactic features. However, behind these differences lies an important similarity: in each case the theory concerned makes two assumptions about grammatical structure in general (i.e. about all structures, including coordinate ones):

I The basic syntagmatic relations in sentence-structure are part-whole relations (consituent structure) and temporal order; note that this is true whether or not syntactic structure is seen as a ‘projection’ of lexical properties, since these lexical properies are themselves defined in terms of constituent structure and temporal order.
Non-local spirantization in Breton
Authors: Stump Gregory T.
Published: December 2008

Among the most striking morphosyntactic characteristics shared by the Celtic languages are their elaborate consonant mutation systems. It is clear from the most cursory inspection that in such systems, the range of possible syntactic relations between mutation triggers and their targets is subject to principled limits. In a recent paper, Zwicky (1984) has hypothesized that trigger-target relations are universally restricted by the constraint in (1):
(1) The trigger determining a rule feature for a morphophonemic rule must be adjacent to the affected word and c-command it (Zwicky, 1984:389).
Towards a lexical analysis of sound change in progress
Authors: Harris John
Published: December 2008

Lexical Phonologists have made a number of claims that are directly relevant to the study of sound change in progress, two of which I wish to examine here. First, phonetically gradient patterns of variation are alleged to be controlled by rules which operate outside the lexicon. Second, phonological rules applying within the lexicon may only refer to feature values that are already marked in underlying representations. This paper sets out to test these claims against empirical data of the sort that have been reported in the sociolinguistic literature. While the first claim appears to be in tune with some informal analyses already offered by sociolinguists, the second is contradicted by at least some of the evidence.
On Horn's dilemma: presupposition and negation
Authors: Burton-Roberts Noel
Published: December 2008

It is an unquestioned assumption of all recent discussions of semantic presupposition that a presuppositional semantics admitting of truth-value gaps depends upon and therefore implies a semantic ambiguity of natural language negation (SAN). Such theories have been criticized and defended on that basis. This essay invites the reader to contemplate the idea that this picture of things is fundamentally mistaken.
Layers and operators in Functional Grammar
Authors: Hengeveld Kees
Published: December 2008

I have argued elsewhere (Hengeveld, 1987b) that for a proper treatment of modality the clause model used in Functional Grammar (Dik, 1978, 1980) should be adapted in such a way that a number of different layers can be distinguished. My main argument there was that predications, used in Functional Grammar to represent linguistic expressions, have two different functions: a DESCRIPTIVE function and a CONTENT function. A predication not only gives a description of the external situation the speaker refers to within his speech act, it also represents the prepositional content or message unit processed within that speech act. Subjective and evidential modalities, which express a propositional attitude, should take a predication in its contentrepresenting function in their scope, whereas objective modalities, i.e. those modalities that are concerned with the actuality status of a State of Affairs (SoA), should take a predication in its SoA-designating function in their scope. A clause model should therefore be able to distinguish between these two functions of predications.
The evolution of negation
Authors: Croft William
Published: December 2008

Recently, linguists have discovered (or, more accurately, rediscovered) the role that historical linguistics can legitimately play in providing explanations for the facts of synchronic language types. Greater awareness of synchronic variability and its source in historical changes in progress has focused attention on the concept of a language as a system not of static structures, but of interacting processes which the individual speaker becomes involved in as he/she acquires the language and enters the language community (Weinreich, Labov & Herzog, 1968). These processes are hypothesized to be universal, in that they may occur in any language family at any time period (though the initial actuation of a change is still a riddle,ibid. 102).
The morphological basis of anaphora
Authors: Burzio Luigi
Published: December 2008

Chomsky (1981: 188, 220; 1986a: 166) formulates the Binding Theory essentially as in (1).

(1) (A) An anaphor must belocally bound

(B) A pronoun must not belocally bound

(C) An R-expression must not be bound

The notion ‘bound’ is defined as ‘c-commanded by a co-referential element’. As for the notion ‘locally’, that of Chomsky (1986a) differs somewhat from that of Chomsky (1981), and much recent literature addresses the issue, especially in connection with the phenomenon of ‘Long Distance Anaphora’. (For relevant discussion see Burzio (1989c and references therein) and also Levinson, this volume.) For most of our purposes, it will be sufficient to assume Chomsky's (1981: 188) ‘within its [i.e. the anaphor's/pronoun‘s] governing category’, or even the formally simpler (though empirically less adequate) ‘within the same minimal clause’. The empirical effects of the Binding Theory in (1) can then be illustrated as in (2a, b, c) – instances of local binding, non-local binding, and no binding respectively. In each case the connecting line expresses intended co-reference, much as co-indexation in later examples. Each ungrammatical case is accounted for by the principle indicated in parentheses.
Pragmatic reduction of the Binding Conditions revisited
Authors: Levinson Stephen C.
Published: December 2008

In an earlier article (Levinson, 1987b), I raised the possibility that a Gricean theory of implicature might provide a systematic partial reduction of the Binding Conditions; the briefest of outlines is given in Section 2.1 below but the argumentation will be found in the earlier article. In this article I want, first, to show how that account might be further justified and extended, but then to introduce a radical alternative. This alternative uses the same pragmatic framework, but gives an account better adjusted to some languages. Finally, I shall attempt to show that both accounts can be combined by taking a diachronic perspective. The attraction of the combined account is that, suddenly, many facts about long-range reflexives and their associated logophoricity fall into place.
On (in)definite articles: implicatures and (un)grammaticality prediction
Authors: Hawkins John A.
Published: December 2008

Since Paul Grice published ‘Logic and conversation’ in 1975, there have been a number of attempts to develop his programmatic remarks on conversational and conventional implicatures further (see Gazdar, 1979; Atlas & Levinson, 1981; Horn, 1985; Sperber & Wilson, 1986; and especially Levinson, 1983, and the references cited therein). The result has been a growing understanding of the relationship between semantics and pragmatics, and more generally of human reasoning in everyday language use. Many aspects of natural language understanding that were previously thought to be part of the conventional meaning of a given expression can now be shown to be the result of conversational inference. And with cancellability as the diagnostic test, a number of traditional problems in the study of meaning are yielding to more satisfactory analyses. Even more ambitiously, implicatures are penetrating into core areas of the syntax, as pragmatic theories of increasing subtlety are proposed for ‘grammatical’ phenomena such as Chomsky's (1981, 1982) binding principles (see Reinhart, 1983, and Levinson, 1987a, b, 1991).
The Nature of Phonological Primes
Authors: Fudge E. C.
Published: December 2008

The ideas of this paper spring from an attempt to grapple with certain phonological problems in a number of languages, and in particular with the special problems which arise when one desires to use a generative, ‘distinctive-feature’ approach. The facts of Tswana phonology summarized below (§5.1) proved especially awkward to handle; when the original twelve features were taken and assigned in a ‘classical’ manner (i.e. [+Vocalic, + Consonantal] for all Liquids, [—Vocalic, —Consonantal] for all Glides, etc.), there were found to be many different ways of characterizing the various segment-types. What was disturbing was that every one of these ways entailed writing phonological rules which failed to highlight the underlying structure, or even obscured it. Conversely, if assignments other than the ‘classical’ were permitted, any attempt to group the segment-types into an arrangement which faithfully reflected the relationships between them (such as Table 8 below) left one with insuperable phonetic problems of feature-assignment. Both these types of difficulty are exemplified in Appendix i.
Three reasons for accenting a definite subject
Authors: Allerton D. J. , Cruttenden A.
Published: December 2008

In 1971–72 a lengthy discussion took place inLanguageconcerning sentence stress (aliasnuclear stress, alias intonation nucleus placement) and its relationship to syntactic structure (Bresnan, 1971, 1972; Lakoff, 1972; Berman & Szamosi, 1972; Bolinger, 1972). Bolinger had the last word in stating that placement of the nuclear accent ‘is not explainable by syntax or morphology’ but ‘is a matter of information, not of structure’ (Bolinger, 1972: 633). According to this view words with low informational content (i.e. highly predictable) in a particular context or situation are unlikely to receive a nuclear stress, whereas words with high information content (i.e. highly unpredictable) are likely to receive a nuclear stress. In addition, ‘the speaker will put the main accent as far to the right as he dares, when assertive pressure is high’ (Bolinger, 1972: 644).
The expression of ‘inferentiality’ in Abkhaz
Authors: Hewitt B. G.
Published: December 2008

In Comrie (1976: 108) we read: ‘Several languages have special inferential verb forms, to indicate that the speaker is reporting some event that he has not himself witnessed, but about whose occurrence he has learnt at second hand (though without, incidentally, necessarily casting doubt on the reliability of the information)’. Two pages later Comrie writes follows:

Serebrennikov (1960: 66) lists the following languages known to him where there is a close formal relation, down to identity, between the expression of perfect and inferential meaning: Turkic languages: the Uralic languages Nenets (Yurak-Samoyed), Finnish, Estonian, Man (Cheremis), Komi (Zyryan), Udmurt (Votyak), Mańśi (Vogul); Georgian; and the Indo-European languages Latvian, Bulgarian, and Albanian.
The basicness of transitives
Authors: Saksena A.
Published: December 2008

This paper raises the question whether transitive or intransitive semantics is the more basic. Recently, the transformational analysis of causatives (Lakoff, 1970; McCawley, 1968) has proposed that transitives are derived from intransitives by a causative transformation — thus implying that intransitive semantics is more basic. Because the transformational model has been so influential2 this claim has been carried over, often unquestioningly, into the grammar of many languages such as Hindi (Kachru, 1966, 1971; Kleiman, 1971). This paper shows that of significance in determining basicness is the question whether intransitive verbs of the form (O_) represent natural activity or agent-motivated activity; and using this criterion, we expect most transitives to be basic.
Parasitic gaps and adverbial clauses
Authors: Haegeman Liliane
Published: December 2008

This paper shows how the occurrence of parasitic gaps in preposed adverbial clauses and licensed by a subject trace can be used in determining the type of adjunction of such adverbial clauses. The sometimes very subtle grammaticality judgments are supported by some evidence from traditional grammars.
Coronal segments in Irish English
Authors: Hickey Raymond
Published: December 2008

One of the most salient differences between Irish English and Standard English (in the sense of Received Pronunciation, Gimson, 1980:89 ff.) lies in the realization of coronal segments. I use this term in the standard sense of Chomsky and Halle (1968:304) and intend it to be understood as a convenient means of referring to several groups of sounds which happen to have in common that they all involve the raising of the point or blade of the tongue from a putative neutral position. In using this term I do not necessarily pledge my support to its effectiveness in phonological description (see 3.1 below for a discussion of distinctive features with reference to Irish English). Precisely what segments are involved here will be clear from the remarks below. Before starting however, a word on the term Irish English is called for: by it I mean the variety of English spoken in the Republic of Ireland (on this see Barry, 1982:101 ff.) as the phenomena which I will be discussing are either not at all or only partially found in the variety of English spoken in Northern Ireland (consider the realizations of / t /and / d / discussed below which are unique to the Republic). Furthermore I have allowed myself the generalization Irish English although there is considerable variety in the English spoken in the Republic of Ireland. But the term Irish English is used in a fairly restricted sense here: it refers to urban middle-class speech. This excludes contact Irish English (in the areas officially designated as a ‘Gaeltacht’ (Irish-speaking area) in which both Irish and English are spoken), rural Irish English and lower class urban English. References to, and comments on these latter varieties are labelled specifically as such.
The Harris–Edmondson dispute: identifying the strawmen
Authors: Rajagopalan Kanavillil
Published: December 2008

The claim made by Harris (1978) that the descriptivist position in respect of performatives is self-defeating has engendered some spirited controversy through the years since then (see Edmondson 1979, 1983, Wachtel, 1980; Spielmann, 1980; Taylor & Wolf, 1981). Let me declare right at the outset that I am with the non-descriptivists. Nevertheless, in what follows, I wish to show (a) that no brusque argument of the sort originally advanced by Harris or subsequently marshalled by the others can help settle the dispute either way, and (b) that the controversy so far has been riddled with a good deal of futile cross-talk which has blinded the participants in the intellectual free-for-all to some of the real issues at hand.
VP complements: evidence from Welsh
Authors: Borsley Robert D.
Published: December 2008

A major controversy in syntactic theory concerns the nature of control verbs, verbs like try, which govern equi-NP-deletion in classical transformational grammar. For recent versions of the extended standard theory and, in particular, the government-binding theory, such verbs take a sentential complement with a PRO subject. (Cf. Chomsky 1980, 1981, 1982 and Koster & May 1982.) On an alternative analysis, originating in Bresnan (1971) and Brame (1975, 1976), and developed by Bresnan (1978, 1982), Gazdar (1982) and others, they take VP complements. A similar dispute arises over raising verbs, verbs like seem, which govern subject raising in classical transformational grammar.
Portraying analogy
Authors: Cruse D. A.
Published: December 2008

This is a book written by a philosopher for philosophers; it needs a philosopher to review it properly. A review by a non-philosopher in the pages of a linguistics journal is justified, however, by the fact that the core of the book consists of a series of proposals concerning one of the fundamental questions of lexical semantics: what are we to make of the apparent variability in the meaning of a word from context to context? (This fact is not immediately inferrable from the title.) The present review focuses exclusively on this topic; it should be borne in mind, however, that the author's exposition of his views on word-meaning occurs as part of a more general discussion concerning the nature of analogy, and its role in literary, religious and legal discourse.
An HPSG approach to Welsh
Authors: Borsley Robert D.
Published: December 2008

Welsh differs from English in a number of ways. The most obvious point is that it is a VSO language, but it also has distinctive agreement phenomena and clitics. For this reason, it is natural to ask of any theory of syntax that has been developed primarily on the basis of English: how can it handle Welsh? Welsh has had fairly extensive attention within the Government-Binding theory (see, for example, Harlow, 1981; Sproat, 1985; Sadler, 1988, and Hendrick, 1988). It has also had some attention within Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG) (see Harlow, 1983; Borsley, 1983; 1988a). In this paper, I will consider how some of the central features of Welsh can be accommodated within Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). This is a framework developed over the last few years by Carl Pollard, Ivan Sag and others, which seeks to combine the insights of GPSG, categorial grammar and certain other theories (see Pollard, 1985, 1988; Sag & Pollard, 1987, and Pollard & Sag, 1988). In fact, I will be mainly concerned with the version of HPSG developed in Borsley (1986, 1987, 1988 b), but I will also have something to say about standard HPSG.
Proper names in communication
Authors: Sophia A. , Marmaridou S.
Published: December 2008

It has long been observed that, although proper names are mainly used to identify individuals uniquely in our universe of discourse, and therefore have a clearly referential function, they are also used connotatively, when, for example, they stand as a shorthand for whatever characteristics a specific individual may at one time have been associated with. These two uses can be illustrated in the following sentences:

(1) Judas was Jesus Christ's disciple who betrayed Him.

(2) Every great man nowadays has his disciples, but it is always Judas who writes the biography (Jespersen, 1965: 66).
Be-heading the word
Authors: Bauer Laurie
Published: December 2008

Notions of ‘head’ and ‘modifier’ have a long and respectable history in syntax, although they have changed considerably in recent years. But the application of similar notions to morphology is relatively new. The extension of these notions to morphology has been prompted by two developments:

(i) Intimations from dependency grammarians that their approach to language ought to be generalizable to morphology (Andersen, 1980); and, far more importantly

(ii) The development of lexicalist theories of word-formation using an X-bar notation.
Secondary resultative predicates in Italian
Authors: Napoli Donna Jo
Published: December 2008

English exhibits PP, AP and NP resultative secondary predicates (SPs). Italian freely exhibits PP resultatives and, less commonly, AP resultatives. This difference follows from two facts. First, resultatives, being arguments of the V except in constructions involving ‘fake’ objects (see section 4), may appear only in positions that non-predicative arguments of the V of their same category can appear in (a correlation stated in (155) below). Since English allows PP, AP and NP non-predicative arguments in the position immediately following the direct object, all three categories can also appear as resultatives in the same position. But since Italian allows only the first two types of non-predicative arguments in this position, only PP and AP resultatives can appear there. Second, Italian sentences with AP resultatives are subject to a rule of semantic interpretation by which the primary predicate must be interpreted as focusing on the endpoint of the activity it denotes (as stated in (110) below). English sentences with AP resultatives are only slightly sensitive to this interpretation rule. As a result, AP resultatives are appropriate in fewer situations in Italian. That AP resultatives are sensitive to this rule of interpretation is consistent with the fact that AP arguments of verb that appear in post-object position are marked in a number of ways.
Null objects and non-thematic subjects
Authors: Massam Diane
Published: December 2008

This article analyses middle constructions in English, accounting for their key syntactic and semantic properties. The analysis rests on the observation that there are certain similarities between middle,toughand recipe-context null-object constructions, such as in (1a–c). (1) (a) This bread cuts—easily. (b) This bread is easy to cut—. (c) Take bread. Cut—carefully (and arrange—nicely).
Nominal inflection and the nature of functional categories
Authors: Spencer Andrew
Published: December 2008

There is a widespread assumption within the Government–Binding theory as it has developed from theBarriersmodel (Chomsky 1986) that functional categories, that is, categories which play a role in establishing dependencies between parts of a sentence, as opposed to lexical categories, should be represented as heads projecting X-bar phrases. I shall refer to this as the Full Functional Projection Hypothesis (FFPH), stated informally in (1). (i)Full Functional Projection HypothesisAny morphophonosyntactic formative which corresponds to a functional category in a given language is syntactically the head of a maximal projection.
Modern Greek deverbal nominals: an LMT approach
Authors: Markantonatou Stella
Published: December 2008

This paper argues that there are Modern Greek (MG) deverbal nominal predicates which take syntactic arguments. A mechanism for the derivation of these nominals requiring the existence of an ‘internal’ ([ — r]) argument is proposed which has broader coverage than the mechanism proposed in Grimshaw (1990). A small set of simple, unification-based operations is employed to model the relation between the argument structure of verb predicates and that of the corresponding deverbal nominals with an ‘ eventive’ reading. The Lexical Mapping Theory of LFG (LMT) is the theoretical framework of the present discussion.
Imperatives, V-movement and logical mood
Authors: Rivero María Luisa , Terzi Arhonto
Published: December 2008

Imperative Vs with distinctive morphology either have a distinctive syntax (Modern Greek, Spanish), or distribute like others Vs (Serbo-Croatian, Ancient Greek). The contrast follows from properties of the root C. The first type has a strong Imperative V-feature in C, and under Chomsky's Greed Principle, Imperative Vs raise overtly to check this feature. The second type is the Wackernagel language, whose C hosts no features, but V-features are in I. If no phrase fronts, Vs move to C to support second position items. V-to-C affects all Vs, is last resort, follows Lasnik's Enlightened Self-Interest, and escapes Greed.
Emphatic or reflexive? On the endophoric character of Frenchlui-mémeand similar complex pronouns
Authors: Zribi-Hertz Anne
Published: December 2008

This study examines the referential properties of a class of complex pronouns labelled M-PRONOUNS, exemplified by Old English HIMSELF, French LUI-MéME and English HISOWN. It is shown that M-pronouns exhibit some properties commonly taken as characterizing reflexive anaphors, and that they also occur as ‘intensive’ pronouns. It is shown, however, that they are not anaphors, and that labelling them ‘intensives’ does not suffice to account for their distribution. It is argued that the semantic properties of M-pronouns may be derived from their morphological structure. Their pronoun component (Old English HIM, French LUI, English HIS) is not a pronominal, in the sense of the Binding Theory, but a bindable expression unspecified for disjoint reference and locality. In the complex form created by M-adjunction, the pronoun is crucially de-stressed and, correlatively, interpreted as endophoric.
The unfolding of suprasegmental representations: a cross-linguistic perspective
Authors: Berg Thomas , Abd-El-Jawad Hassan
Published: December 2008

An analysis of phonological speech errors in Arabic, English and German is carried out with a view to probing into the organization of segments within syllables and words. Arabic slips are shown to be less structure-sensitive than English and German ones. Being absent from underlying representation, suprasegmental structures are assumed to unfold gradually in real time. The erection of hierarchical representations is claimed to be slower in Arabic than in English and German because the nonconcatenative morphology of Arabic prevents an early assignment of consonants to structural slots. In contrast, English and German words allow the early build-up of hierarchical structures because sufficient phonological information is available from the beginning of the derivation.
Are apposition markers discourse markers?
Authors: Blakemore Diane
Published: December 2008

This paper aims to re-assess the notion DISCOURSE MARKER as it is applied to a subset of so-called apposition markers. It is argued that the classification of markers of reformulation as discourse markers alongside expressions like but and so is incoherent from a semantic point of view, since this ignores the distinction between PROCEDURAL and CONCEPTUAL meaning. Moreover, this classification is based on an account of discourse which is not only based on an insufficiently general account of context, but which is also difficult to maintain in the light of the use of these expressions in parenthetical nominal appositions. An alternative account is developed in the framework of Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory building on recent work on the meaning of parentheticals and sentence adverbials.
Postnominal adjectives in Spanish DPs
Authors: Bosque Ignacio , Picallo Carme
Published: December 2008

Starting from the traditional distinction between R(elational) and Q(ualifying) adjectives, we divide the former into two major subclasses: Th(ematic) and C(lassificatory) adjectives. This distinction has effects on semantic interpretation and word order. Th-adjectives obey the thematic hierarchy and C-adjectives follow patterns of subclassification of objects in different domains. R-adjectives are maximal projections mapped into specifier positions. Spanish, contrary to English, has overt raising for gender and number checking on the noun and the adjectives. R-adjectives are argued to form syntactic clusters by a series of adjunctions that satisfy antisymmetric c-command requirements and minimality constraints on movement.
Some observations on metalinguistic negation
Authors: Chapman Siobhan
Published: December 2008

This paper is concerned with the phenomenon labelled ‘metalinguistic negation’ (MN) by Horn (1985). The interaction of MN with negative polarity items, lexically incorporated negation, and accentuation, is considered in order to establish its exact scope and range of applicability. The relationships between MN and various types of implicature are advanced in support of the use of MN as a diagnostic for aspects of an utterance which are properties of the linguistic expression used. The implications of this for the status of accent are assessed. Finally, the particularly stylistic effects of MN are considered, in relation to the topics discussed.
Synonyms and syntax
Authors: Hudson Richard , Rosta Andrew , Holmes Jasper , Gisborne Nikolas
Published: December 2008

Recent work in a variety of different theoretical traditions has tended to emphasize the close match between syntax and semantics (Dixon 1991; Langacker 1987, 1990, 1995; Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1991, 1992; Wierzbicka 1988). It is very easy to be left with the impression that, if only we could analyse the relevant syntactic and semantic structures correctly, this match would be total. The following are fairly typical statements:

The picture that emerges is that a verb's behavior arises from the interaction of its meaning and general principles of grammar. Thus the lexical knowledge of a speaker of a language must include knowledge of the meaning of individual verbs, the meaning components that determine the syntactic behavior of verbs, and the general principles that determine behavior from verb meaning. (Levin 1993: 11)
Predicate union and the syntax of Japanese causatives
Authors: Dubinsky Stanley
Published: December 2008

This paper presents a monoclausal, multipredicate analysis of Japanese causatives, adopting the fundamental assumptions of Relational Grammar. Evidence is provided for the existence of two distinct classes of causatives, distinguished on the basis of the agentivity of the matrix subject. It is also demonstrated that the surface case marking of the causee is constrained by its relative status to the matrix subject with respect to a set of Proto-Agent entailments (as proposed in Dowty 1991).
Binding and non-distinctness: a reply to Burzio
Authors: Franks Steven , Schwartz Linda
Published: December 2008

A serious and widely recognized problem of the standard Binding Theory is that it has no non-circular definition of the crucial notions ‘anaphor’, ‘pronoun’ and ‘R-expression’. Burzio (1991) proposes a significant new characterization of these notions, based on their absolute and relative morphological content. Specifically, he proposes that different NP types can be distinguished by their Θ-feature content: anaphors lack Θ-features altogether, pronouns have Θ-features and no other features, and R-expressions have Θ-features plus referential information, as in (1). The Binding Theory can then be regarded as a single principle, stated in (2).
Cognitive structures and semantic deep structures: the case of the instrumental
Authors: Schlesinger I. M.
Published: December 2008

Many linguists describe the underlying structure of sentences in terms of cases (e.g. Fillmore, 1968) or relations between the verb and nouns (Chafe, 1970), the, usually tacit, assumption being that this reflects the way we view the world. The underlying linguistic structure would accordingly be a formalization of cognitive structure. Elsewhere (Schlesinger, 1977: Ch. 5 ), I have argued that a distinction has to be made between cognitive structures and semantic deep structures. Cognitive structures correspond to the way we perceive the world.
Would have become: empty or modal will
Authors: Huddleston Rodney
Published: December 2008

In an earlier paper (Huddleston, 1977) I analysed the would of (I) If he had stayed in the army, he would have become a colonel as the unreal mood form of an epistemic modal verb WILL that figures in the underlying syntactic representation and falls within the semantic scope of a past element realized by HAVE. Palmer (1978) criticizes this analysis, claiming that WILL is ‘obviously’ semantically empty, a mere ‘dummy’ inserted to carry the mark of unreality – that would have become is ‘the Unreal and Past form of BECOME’.
Polygamy, Purdah and Political Representation: Engendering citizenship in 1950s Pakistan
Authors: ANSARI SARAH
Published: December 2008

Debates on Islam, citizenship and women's rights have been closely interconnected in Pakistan, from the time of the state's creation in 1947 through to the present day. This article explores the extent to which during the 1950s campaigns to reform Muslim personal law (which received a boost thanks to the outcry against 1955 polygamous marriage of the then Prime Minister, Muhammad Ali Bogra) were linked with wider lobbying by female activists to secure for women their rights as Pakistani citizens alongside men. Through a close examination of the discussions that were conducted on the pages of English-language newspapers, such asDawnand thePakistan Times, it highlights in particular what female contributors thought about issues that were affecting the lives of women in Pakistan during its early, and often challenging, nation-building years.
Question level and cognitive processing: Psycholinguistic dimensions of questions and answers
Authors: Koivukari A. Mirjami
Published: December 2008

Previous research provides evidence about a relationship between the quality of questions and the depth of processing of an input. If questions about a subject matter are asked in a certain way, students are likely to process it in depth. In this article, inputs, question levels, and depths of processing are described. Three categories of coding were defined through observation of secondary classrooms in Zaire: (a) reproducing words (rote), (b) reproducing content (comprehension 1), (c) generating new content (comprehension 2). After teacher training emphasizing student comprehension, statistically significant shifts from Category 1 behavior to Category 2 and 3 behavior were observed in the experimental classes. It is suggested that surface or deep processing can be induced by manipulating certain dimensions of inputs and questions.
A quantitative and qualitative analysis of speech markers in the native and second language speech of bilinguals
Authors: Olynyk Marian , D'Anglejan Alison , Sankoff David
Published: December 2008

The present study investigated the use of five speech markers in the native and second language production of French-English bilinguals in a military setting. We propose that these speech markers, mechanisms for self-repair and turn-taking in conversations, are a major component of fluency. The ten participants, five high fluency speakers and five low fluency speakers, were tape-recorded with their peers in three different situations in their native and second languages, and the frequency of occurrence of speech markers was tabulated for a 5-minute segment for each situation.

It was hypothesized that speakers who used differentially more prepositioned repairs (progressives) or markers placed before the repair that do not require a reorganization of the expectation of what is to follow based on what has been produced in the turn so far, would be judged more favourably than those who used more postpositioned repairs (regressives). There was no quantitative difference in the frequency of occurrence of speech markers between the high and low fluency speakers, but the high fluency speakers used more progressive than regressive types of marker. Progressive markers place fewer demands on the interlocutor than regressive markers, which require constant readjustments on the part of the listener. The profiles were similar for each individual in the native and second language but in every case there were fewer markers in the native than in the second language. Furthermore, there were fewer markers in the planned (teaching) than in the unplanned (interview) situation. The findings have important implications for the evaluation of second language fluency.
Effectiveness of partial French immersion for children from different social class and ethnic backgrounds
Authors: Holobow Naomi E. , Genesee Fred , Lambert Wallace E. , Gastright Joseph , Met Myriam
Published: December 2008

A program of partial (half-day) French immersion in the Cincinnati Public Schools was evaluated in the kindergarten year. The English and French language development of participating native English-speaking children from both working and middle class backgrounds was assessed. The results indicated, firstly, that the pupils who spent half of their academic time in a foreign language (French) progressed just as well in English as carefully matched control pupils who followed a conventional all-English program. Secondly, it was found that socioeconomically underprivileged children (both black and white) benefited from an immersion-type introduction to a foreign language as much as pupils from middle class homes did. The degree of progress made in French was not linked with the social class background of the pupils even though this background factor clearly affected the students' performance on the English language tests. These results suggest that the immersion experience may help to diminish the effects of social class background.
Development in story writing
Authors: Freedman Aviva
Published: December 2008

This study describes development in the realization of story structure in the written productions of schoolchildren at three grade levels (5, 8, and 12) when writing in two different modes: true stories and invented. The scripts analysed were randomly selected from the compositions produced by the entire population of the three grade levels in one Canadian Board (7,500 students). The instrument of analysis was based on the story grammar developed by Stein and Glenn (1979). The analysis revealed: (a) there is development by age in the degree of realization of an “ideal form” of story schema, that is, one involving some setting information plus one complete episode; (b) the rate of development differs depending on whether stories are true or invented; (c) patterns of such development are complex and cannot be represented by a steady curve upward.