bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Which syntax: A consumer's guide
Authors: Marshall J. C. , Wales R. C.
Published: December 2008

1. The present paper is a critique of Halliday's ‘Syntax an;’, the consumer' (1964).2 As avid consumers of linguistic theory (our interest stemming from; a very general concern with the psychology of language) we are naturally delighted that Halliday has our welfare at heart. He states that a theory of competence should not be regarded as the terminal point of syntactic study, but that ‘the explanation of linguistic performance’ and ‘the description of language for the purpose of various specific applications’ are important and reasonable goals. With this attitude we enthusiastically concur. Halliday outlines his basic point of departure with the following question (1964: 11–12): ‘Language may be described for a wide range of purposes, or, if that is begging the question I want to ask, there is a wide range of purposes for which a description of language may be used. The question is: do these various aims presuppose different ways of using the same description, or are they best served by descriptions of different kinds? Is there one single “best description” of a language, or are there various possible “best descriptions” according to the purpose in view?’
On the use of minor rules in Russian phonology
Authors: Lightner Theodore M.
Published: December 2008

Although this paper deals with Russian phonology, our aim is not to describe in detail any part of the phonological component of Russian (cf. Lightner, 1966 and forthcoming); rather, we are concerned here with demonstrating the explanatory adequacy of a modified framework of generative phonology.
Syllables
Authors: Fudge E. C.
Published: December 2008

Kohler (1966a, 1966b: 346–348) asks whether the syllable is a phonological universal, and concludes negatively.1The way to support such a conclusion is not difficult to imagine: the sort of specific objections to the syllable which Kohler raises would, if well-founded, be sufficient to prove his case.
-Ed Adjectives like ‘verandahed’ and ‘blue-eyed’
Authors: Hirtle W. H.
Published: December 2008

The problem that provides the subject of the present study has, curiously enough, received little more than a passing glance from most grammarians. Many of them mention that adjectives can be formed from substantives by means of a dental suffix, but none seem to be intrigued by the four aspects of the problem to be examined here. The fact that these aspects of the problem have received little or no attention up to now would in itself justify this study. There is, however, a further and even weightier justification. The problem brings into focus four parts of speech-verb (through the past participle), substantive, adjective and adverb–and so provides an excellent opportunity for observing the relations between these categories. Such a chance should not be missed, especially at a time when not merely the system but the very existence of the parts of speech is being called into question.
Hokkien phonological structure
Authors: Tay Mary W. J.
Published: December 2008

This paper attempts to present the abstract phonological system which underlies the sounds produced when a Malayan variety of Engchun Hokkien is spoken.2 It is set within a generative framework and some attempt is made at a formalization of phonological rules.
On the evaluation of alternative phonological descriptions
Authors: Zimmer Karl E.
Published: December 2008

It has been repeatedly suggested in the literature on generative phonology that the number of features which appear in phonological rules be used in an evaluation measure for alternative descriptions of the phonology of a language; thus Halle states (1962: 55): ‘Given two alternative descriptions of a particular body of data, the description containing fewer… symbols will be regarded as simpler and will, therefore, be preferred over the other.’ The purpose of the present paper is to examine critically the application of the proposed feature-counting evaluation measure to alternative analyses of a very restricted body of data in the phonology of Turkish. The data considered are, as far as I can see, self-contained in that the analyses to be discussed do not have any implications elsewhere in the system of phonological rules; the adequacy of the decision based on the evaluation measure in question can therefore be fully assessed in connexion with the minor problem we shall be examining.
Phonological structure and ‘expressiveness’
Authors: Fudge Erik
Published: December 2008

Words of certain semantic types which can be subsumed under the label ‘expressive’ (notably onomatopoeias, movement words, and words with pejorative, jocular, or intense connotations) have a tendency in a wide range of languages to be associated with peculiarities of phonological structure – these peculiarities include types of sounds, sound-sequences and syllable-structures which can be regarded as peripheral in the language concerned.
The English ‘Perfect’ reconsidered
Authors: Bauer Gero
Published: December 2008

In an article in this Journal (Specification and English tenses) Crystal has pointed out the hitherto neglected role that adverbial determiners may play in giving unambiguous indication of time where the verbal tense-form itself is not specific enough: ‘It is [in such cases] not a question of tense-form alone giving the relevant distinguishing indication of time, as has been traditionally assumed, but of tense-form with or without adverbial specification which gives unambiguous indication’ (Crystal, 1966: 5). Adverbials may thus become ‘non-omissible determiners’ (a term borrowed by Crystal from Ivić, 1962).
Explanations
Authors: Dakin Julian
Published: December 2008

Explanations answer or anticipate questions about why something happened or why something is as it is. Such questions are often difficult to answer, for they require us not only to think of an explanation, but to think of one that will satisfy the questioner. I shall not attempt here to evaluate the satisfactoriness of various types of explanation. Rewarding though such an investigation would undoubtedly be, its very initiation depends upon the prior resolution of a more mundane descriptive problem: which utterances should be classified as explanations—however unsatisfactory they may be—and which should be classified as something else? It is with this problem that I shall be concerned in this paper—with a search for formal properties that distinguish explanations from other kinds of utterance such as simple statements.
Quantitative analysis of writing styles
Authors: Moerk Ernst L.
Published: December 2008

It was attempted to analyse objectively the written style of different authors. Nineteen style variables were defined and the frequency of occurrence of these variables in samples of 1000 words each was counted. The Chi-square method was employed to evaluate the significance of differences found between authors and between samples of the same author. Results showed that all authors could be significantly differentiated from each other. There were much smaller and mainly insignificant differences between samples of the same author. Probable relationships between personality and style were discussed, and problems for future research were pointed out concerning linguistic and statistical aspects of the approach.
The time variable in phonological change
Authors: Chen Matthew , Hsieh Hsin-I
Published: December 2008

One of the perennial problems in diachronic linguistics is how to reconcile, on the one hand, the Neogrammarian postulate of sound laws operating without exception, and, on the other hand, the embarrassingly numerous irregularities we observe in many languages. On most occasions linguists have attempted to solve the problem by positing interdialectal borrowing or analogical levelling and have largely overlooked the possibility of the gradual diffusion of phonological changes across the lexicon. As a result of the lexical gradualness of sound changes, exceptions may be created either through the incompletion of a sound change, or owing to the conflict of two sound changes overlapping along the time dimension. It is the latter concept that we will attempt to elaborate and illustrate with two sets of data, both from Peking dialect. We have chosen Chinese as a case study for an obvious reason: it is possible in the case of Chinese, like few other cases, to follow sound changes step by step through the phonological dictionaries, rhyme charts and other records compiled at various stages of history. The columns on Tables 1 and 2 contain information taken from the various datable phonological dictionaries.
Boundaries as obstruents: Old English voicing assimilation and universal strength hierarchies
Authors: Lass Roger
Published: December 2008

I. The facts about the behaviour of fricatives in Old English in relation to surrounding segments are well known; but these facts (and some others) illustrate some interesting general principles that seem not to have been thoroughly discussed. A classic formulation of the data is that of Sweet (1953: 3):

… f and s, in addition to their modern values, could represent respectively the sounds of v and z, letters which were not normally used in O.E. These three letters, f, s, p, had the sounds of f, s, and th in thin (‘breathed’ or ‘voiceless’) initially and finally in accented words; next to ‘voiceless’ consonants (such as p, t); and when double; … They had the sounds of v, z, and th in then (‘voiced’) when single between vowels, or between a vowel and another ‘voiced’ sound (such as l, r, m, n)….

To generalize this, we might say that in Old English fricatives were voiced between sonorants, and voiceless if geminate or contiguous to a major boundary, or in clusters with voiceless obstruents (of which as we will see geminates are a special case). One way of capturing these facts would be a rule which states simply that fricatives are voiced between sonorants, and voiceless elsewhere.
Child phonology: a prosodic view
Authors: Waterson Natalie
Published: December 2008

During the past few years linguists have begun to express doubts about the validity of segmental analysis for the study of child language and have come to feel that it is probable that a child perceives spoken language differently from an adult, e.g. Bellugi & Brown (1964: 113), Ingram (1966: 218), Ladefoged (1967: 148–9), Lenneberg (1967: 279–281), Weir (1962: 30). They are also beginning to realize the importance of treating a child's language as having its own independent system (Carroll, 1961: 332; Fry, 1966: 194). To date, however, investigators of child speech have made their analyses on a segmental and distributional basis and have expressed the child's phonological system in terms of the adult's phonemic system; one may cite for example Cohen (1969), Grégoire (1933, 1947), Jakobson (1941), Jakobson & Halle (1961), Leopold (1939, 1947, 1961), Lewis (1968), Ohnesorg (1959), Velten (1943) and Weir (1962). Such studies, valuable though they be, cannot be said to have succeeded in explaining the relationship between the forms and structures of child and adult and have left many questions unanswered such as:
(1) What governs the choice of sound that the child will use as a ‘substitute’ for an adult sound?
(2) Why does the child ‘drop’ certain sounds of the adult form or ‘substitute’ for them when he is already capable of making such sounds and is in factusing them in some other contexts?
(3) Why does the child use homonyms for adult forms which appear to be quite unlike each other and which have been proved to be semantically clearly differentiated for the child?
(4) What governs the form that reduplicated words take?
An underground rule in Maltese
Authors: Cowan William
Published: December 2008

This note is concerned with historical sound change expressed in rules added to a previous set of rules that develop a language from an earlier to a later form. I am not prepared at this time to explore in full the relationship between rules of sound change and rules of generative phonology, although it is obvious that this relationship exists in Maltese, as in many other languages. Because my considerations are primarily historical ones, perhaps ‘law’ would be a better term than ‘rule’, in spite of its being hopelessly out of date. However, since the term ‘rule’ and the format in which the information is presented are familiar and useful, I will use them here.
Phonology in syntax
Authors: Hetzron Robert
Published: December 2008

In the present study I am adducing arguments against the assumption that there is a discrete level of grammar where all syntactic operation has stopped and the assignment of phonetic values to the then existing structure (the output of transformations) begins.

The concept of ‘surface structure’ has received the following definitions in Chomsky's various works: ‘a proper bracketing of the linear, temporarily given sequence of elements, with the paired brackets labelled by category names (that is a labelled tree diagram, with such categories as Sentence, Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, Noun, and a small number of others serving as labels)' (Chomsky, 1966: 21), ‘the organization into categories and phrases that is directly associated with the physical signal’ (Chomsky, 1968:25). These definitions take the physical event of speech as a starting point, and refer to the organization of the sentence on this level (cf. Chomsky, 1965a: 15). One finds, on the other hand, that in the Chomskyan system ‘surface structure’ is also defined in terms of derivation, as the last item in a finite sequence of phrase-markers, the output of the transformations (Chomsky, 1970: 53 f., 87), and such surface structures ‘are mapped into phonetic representations by the phonological rules’ (ibid.: 54) and are assigned intonational contours by rules of phonological interpretation (ibid.: 77). This is summed up in the formula ‘phonology: Pn→phonetic representation’ (ibid.: 87, where Pn is the surface structure, the last phrase-marker).
Some thoughts on agentivity
Authors: Cruse D. A.
Published: December 2008

The term ‘agentive’ is a familiar one in current discussions of the syntax of English (and other languages). Although most who use it seem, at first glance, to be referring to more or less the same semantic feature, the term is employed in a variety of ways. For instance, Fillmore (1968: 24) talks of an ‘agentive case’; Gruber (1967: 943) has ‘agentive verbs’; Lyons and others speak of ‘agentive nouns’; while Halliday (1967: 196), although he does not use the term ‘agentive’, distinguishes a feature of clauses which is clearly related to the notion of agentivity. Apart from this disagreement as to what, precisely, the term ‘agentive’ is to be predicated of, there is a further divergence of opinion over which nouns (or verbs, etc.) are to be considered agentive. For instance, Lyons marks the surface subject of see as agentive (1968: 387). Fillmore, on the other hand, assigns this to the dative case, and Gruber classifies see as a non-agentive verb. Again, Lyons and Halliday take up what are in effect incompatible positions with regard to the status of the prisoners in John marched the prisoners. In view of this indeterminacy, it seems worthwhile to attempt a critical examination of the notion of agentivity, in the hope that a clearer characterization of it might emerge.
The English perfective and ‘still’/‘anymore’
Authors: Morrissey Michael D.
Published: December 2008

Traugott and Waterhouse (1968: 302) have made the interesting suggestion that the adverbials already and yet should be generated from a set of semantic features associated with the perfective, and that still may be related to the progressive in a similar way. The present paper hopes to show that still and anymore are actually more related to the PERFECTIVE than previously supposed, and that a description of these forms in structural semantic terms, particularly with respect to what Chafe (1970) calls the distribution of new information, helps to clarify the meaning of the perfective inflection.
On the formal expression of natural rules in phonology
Authors: Chen Matthew
Published: December 2008

While the notion of naturalness or plausibility has been a tacit guiding principle for past generations of phonologists, the effort to accord the notion of naturalness a theoretical status and to incorporate this notion into the descriptive formalism of a linguistic theory was a major innovation by the generative school. In accordance with what we may refer to as the ‘formalness condition’, the generativist requires that the substantive naturalness of a phonological process be explicitly recognizable in the very formalism used to state the process. The lively interest in and the on-going search for a ‘natural’ phonology is very much in evidence, witness, e.g., the titles of papers presented at the 1971 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America.
Lexical versus periphrastic causatives in Korean,
Authors: shibatani Masayoshi
Published: December 2008

1. The paraphrase relation or the cognitive synonymy between sentences has played a key rôle in the development of the theory of transformational grammar. It was a remarkable feat of early transformational grammarians to discover that the cognitive synonymy as well as the similarity of certain selectional restrictions between pairs of active and passive sentences can be accounted for by positing single deep structures, and by relating the two types of surface sentences by transformations: I have in mind the restrictions which apply to sentences such as John frightens sincerity, Sincerity is frightened by John.
The deep structure of adjectives in noun phrases
Authors: Sussex Roland
Published: December 2008

The syntax of adjectives is perhaps one of the less controversial issues in contemporary transformational generative grammar. Predicative adjectives are held to underly attributives (Harris, 1952; Chomsky, 1957: 72; Lees, 1960a), and are further embedded from underlying relative clauses (Smith, 1961, 1964; Lees, 1960b; Katz & Postal, 1964). This position has not apparently been seriously affected by several attacks on the primacy of predicative adjectives (Winter, 1965; Bolinger, 1967; Motsch, 1967) and on the relative clause source of restrictives (Annear, 1969); and it has if anything been strengthened by attempts to prove that adjectives are derived from deeper underlying classes (Lakoff, 1966, 1970: Appendix A; Bowers, 1968; Ross, 1969; Givón, 1970; and see Sussex, 1971: Ch. 2). The aim of the present paper is to present several objections to the analysis deriving attributive adjectives from predicative adjectives in relative clauses, on the basis of the formal and semantic characteristics of prenominal attributive adjectives like: (1) fine white Georgian house and to investigate some of the theoretical questions raised by these objections.
The single mother condition
Authors: Sampson Geoffrey
Published: December 2008

I propose a modification of the notion ‘phrase-marker’, to permit nodes to branch upwards as well as downwards. The change for which I argue both simplifies linguistic theory and renders it more empirically adequate.
Problems in the analysis of ed-adjectives
Authors: Hudson R. A.
Published: December 2008

There are a large number of ‘adjectives’ in English that consist of a noun to which is suffixed -ed and which may be preceded by a modifier such as an adjective or a numeral (e.g. bearded, blue-eyed, three-legged). They have been treated at length in this journal (Hirtle, 1970), and I should like to continue the discussion of them by highlighting some problems raised by Hirtle, disagreeing with his main conclusion, and adding a few more problems of my own.
On the form of a systemic grammar
Authors: McCord Michael C.
Published: December 2008

This paper concerns the theory of SYSTEMIC GRAMMAR, developed by Halliday (1961, 1967a, 1967b 1968, 1970), Hudson (1967, 1970, 1971, 1973, forthcoming, ms. a, ms. b) and others. In Hudson (1971) a detailed generative version of the theory has been presented, and specifically I want to suggest modifications of this model which I believe improve it. Although a fair amount of the paper consists of criticism of, and comparison with, Hudson's model, the description of what I propose is self-contained and that portion can be read independently.
The Duke of York gambit
Authors: Pullum Geoffrey K.
Published: December 2008

A Duke who has not been satisfactorily identified with any historical figure is lampooned in a traditional rhyme (believed to have been directed originally at the King of France) as follows:

The Grand Old Duke of York

He had ten thousand men

He marched them up a great high hill

And he marched them down again.

The implication is that this was incompetent and self-defeating activity on his part. Linguists very frequently seem to give evidence of a tacitly held belief that there is similarly something inept and risible about a linguistic analysis which determines that certain structures are assigned a derivation of the general form A→B→A, that is a derivation in which an underlying representation (or some nonultimate remote representation) is mapped on to an intermediate form distinct from it, and then on to a surface (or other superficial) representation which is identical with the earlier stage.
The status of rule reordering
Authors: Hogg Richard M.
Published: December 2008

Within the standard theory of generative phonology, the phonological component consists of a set of partially ordered rules; where G1 and G2 are synchronic grammars of a given language L at chronologically earlier and chronologically later stages of L respectively, G1 and G2 may differ in at least the following ways: (a) G2 may contain new (phonological) rules ordered later than all rules in G1; (b) G2 may contain new rules ordered before some rules already present in G1 (c) G2 may contain the same rules as G1, but arranged in some different order; (d) G2 may operate upon a different underlying representation from that for G1 (and hence contain, to a greater or lesser degree, quite different rules); (e) some rules present in G1 may no longer be present in G2 (f) some rules o7f G1 may be present only in a modified form in G2.
The grammar of ‘content’ and ‘container’
Authors: Schwartz-Norman Linda
Published: December 2008

I. In this paper I will examine the systematic alternation in grammatical relations (or functions) of noun phrases in the semantic rôles that I will refer to as ‘content’ and ‘container’ for that class of English verbs which appear in the syntactic frames given in (I):

(I)(a)…V NP1 IN/ON(TO) NP2

…load the hay on the waggon

(b)…V NP2 WITH NP1

…load the waggon with the hay.

This class of verbs, exemplified by load, spread and spray is particularly interesting because of the claim made in Anderson (1971) that the noun phrase which stands in the grammatical relation of direct object is semantically interpreted as being wholly involved in the action or wholly in the state indicated by the verb. Thus, for verbs that may appear in both of the frames in (I), if Anderson's analysis is correct, the semantic interpretation of structures like (a) and (b) will be distinct in that in (a), NP1 should be interpreted holistically and NP2 should not, while in (b), NP2 should be interpreted holistically, and NP1 should not. After first examining some general characteristics of this class of verbs, I will point out some problems which are presented by Anderson's analysis.
Modals and actuality
Authors: Palmer F. R.
Published: December 2008

Part of the meaning of a verb phrase containing a form of one of the English modal verbs CAN and WILL1 is that the actions, events, etc., indicated by the following full verb took place, takes place and will take place. I shall use the term MODALITY to refer to the meaning of the modal verb and EVENT to refer to the meaning of the full verb and say that, in certain circumstances, there is ACTUALITY of the event or that the event is ACTUALIZED. I wish to discuss the circumstances in which this is so and attempt to provide explanations in terms of some of the characteristics of modality in general.
In Support of extrinsic ordering
Authors: Vago Robert M.
Published: December 2008

1. Most versions of generative phonological theory contain a provision for restricting the ordering of rules in the grammar of individual languages.1 The use of language particular, or extrinsic, ordering statements has recently been challenged by Koutsoudas, Sanders & Noll (1974). These authors propose an alternative theory whose principal claim is that the ordering of rules follows from universal principles. Within this theory, which we may term the Unordered Rules Theory, a derivation proceeds as follows:

(i) (a) A representational string is checked against the structural descriptions of all the rules. If only one rule is applicable, then that rule is applied (optionally, in case the rule is optional); if two or more rules are applicable, then universal principles, such as (6) below, may enforce the applicational precedence of one rule over another rule; if the conditions of the universal sequencing principles are not satisfied, then the rules are applied simultaneously.
A tough object to trace
Authors: Quirk Randolph
Published: December 2008

where t is the ‘trace’ of the (wh) object and where wh becomes obligatorily null (cf. 23) in the ‘infinitival relative’ (and the ‘complementizer’ for as well if the infinitive has no subject, such as you in this instance)

Among the numerous constructions, disparate on the face of it, that Chomsky insightfully brings together in this paper is ‘that of the infinitival complements of easy, etc.’ (47) which he sees as having ‘an embedded S … with an obligatory PRO subject’ (48). I do not wish to comment1 on the merits or otherwise of such an analysis but only to question ‘the assumption that the complement clause’ in
Fast speech as a function of tempo in natural generative phonology
Authors: Bolozky Shmuel
Published: December 2008

Linguists referring to ‘fast speech’ and to ‘normal speech’ often do not share the same definitions of the two terms. ‘Fast speech’ is normally intended as increase in speech tempo that affects the normal/slow norm, but it is also recognized that ‘fast speech phenomena’ occur in casual speech that is not necessarily rapid, and that ‘casualness’ of speech is a complex sociolinguistic notion the components of which are hard to isolate (see, for instance, Dressler, 1974, and Vanecek et al, 1975, for a discussion of the correlation between decreased attention and phonological casualness, and other factors referred to in Dressler, 1975). It is not at all clear what ‘normal speech’ is either. It is usually identified with ‘maximally distinct/differentiated speech’, but as pointed out to me by Arnold Zwicky, this is probably not the case, since there are processes that apply to give 'careful‘ or ‘;emphatic‘ speech (as when the l in please is made syllabic). Zwicky believes that normal speech ‘is related to whatever level of representation (roughly the phonemic) figures in normal rhyming (hat and had will not count as rhymes, even if they are pronounced the same, while stepped and slept will count as rhymes, even if they are pronounced differently, say without the t in slept)’ (personal communication). This paper does not attempt to tackle the problem in its entirety; it will only deal with the tempo aspect of fast speech and with the theoretical implications of increase in rate of speech. The reason for concentrating on tempo is that it can be isolated more easily than the various factors, social and other, involved in casual speech. It will also be assumed that speech tempo is relative, i.e. that one man's normal rate of speech may be another man's fast speech tempo, and that although increase in speech tempo may sometimes result in increased attention and thus in retention of the overall level of formality (Vanecek et al, 1975), the common tendency is for increased reduction and assimilation with the increase in the rate of articulation.
Linguistic universals as evidence for empiricism
Authors: Sampson Geoffrey
Published: December 2008

I. Noam Chomsky turned the previously rather specialized discipline of linguistics into a subject of considerable general philosophical interest by his argument that the discovery of universal properties of natural language requires us to adopt a ‘nativist’ or ‘rationalist’ view of human mind – a view according to which ‘our systems of belief are those that the mind, as a biological structure, is designed to construct’ (Chomsky, 1976: 7). (I shall use the terms ‘nativism’ and ‘rationalism’ interchangeably in this article, since any difference we make between them is not important in the context of Chomsky's work. The truth is that, as with many philosophical ‘isms’, the two words do duty for a range of many more than two closely related, partly overlapping theses.) When Chomsky began publishing, a widespread attitude to human language was that expressed by Martin Joos (1957: 96): ‘languages [can] differ from each other without limit and in unpredictable ways’. Chomsky claims that this is false: to quote one of his favourite examples, it is perfectly possible to imagine a language which forms yes/no questions simply by reversing the order of the words in the corresponding statements, yet in fact no natural language has a rule remotely like this (even though this rule seems rather simpler, in an absolute sense, than many of the rules which are found in natural languages). Human languages differ in some respects, but in other respects they are all cut to a common pattern. Much of Chomsky's and his followers' work consists of formulating and testing increasingly refined hypotheses about the precise limits within which natural languages may vary.
The s-Ø alternation in French: a morphological solution
Authors: Durand J. , Lyche C.
Published: December 2008

Our aim in this paper is to study the s-ø alternation found in pairs like côtecostal. As far as we know, the phenomenon has not been studied in detail by any generative phonologist. We have found in the literature some passing references to the question but all the solutions seem to be based on scanty evidence. In contradistinction to previous approaches, we have based our analysis on an exhaustive list of all the alternations in question. The source of our material is the Petit Robert (Rey et al., 1972), which includes approximately 50,000 words. We are perfectly aware of the fact that no French person knows/uses all these alternations and are therefore dealing with an ‘idealized’ speaker. But, since the solution we propose is heavily based on the morphological marking of words, it would be no blow to our analysis if one were to discover (as is possibly the case) that in a particular dialect of French very few of these forms are actually related.
Subordinate clauses and asymmetry in English
Authors: Smaby Richard M.
Published: December 2008

Linguists are constantly invoking a relation of subordination of one clause to another and there seems to be agreement among linguists, about their native tongues at least. Yet the reason for the existence of the relation and the consistency of judgments concerning it is not well understood. The study of subordination and of argumentation for assigning the relation can profitably be made from at least two viewpoints. One viewpoint is paradigmatic or transformational. Evidence for subordination derives from an asymmetry in certain transformational relationships. Non-subordinating constructions on a pair of clauses show identical properties in each clause when the whole construction undergoes transformation, while the same transformations display non-identical properties in the clauses of subordinating constructions. The other viewpoint is syntagmatic or textual. One might even call this viewpoint semantic. Subordinating constructions are restricted in their co-occurrence within coreference patterns of a text in a way that corresponds to an intuitive feeling that a subordinate clause is not the topic of the text at the point where it occurs. Thus one might state the pattern by saying that the common element of meaning of all subordination markers is to indicate that the clause they operate on is subordinate in topic to the non-marked clause. However, the precise account will be in cerms of coreference patterns.
The child's lexical representation: the ‘puzzle-puddle-pickle’ evidence
Authors: Macken Marlys A.
Published: December 2008

Smith (1973) presents a detailed analysis of his son's phonological development between the ages of two and four.1 The book is impressive, not only for the care with which the analysis was done but also, and more importantly, for the clarity with which central acquisition issues were stated. The analysis of the child's productions was done in two ways: first as a mapping from the adult system and second as a self-contained system. In his introduction, Smith raises seven issues that any theory of language acquisition must address; one of these concerns the nature of phonological change. Smith states that when changes occur in the child's output, they do so in an ‘across-the-board’ fashion. On the basis of this (and other) evidence, Smith concludes that the child must have the adult surface form as his underlying lexical representation. The implication is clear: the child must thus perceive in an adult-like fashion and the deviance of his/her output is due to the articulatory difficulty of certain sounds and sound sequences (and in some cases to certain formal properties of his mapping system).
Going through the motions
Authors: Wachtel Tom
Published: December 2008

Harris (1978) discusses the ‘descriptivist’ and ‘non-descriptivist’ interpretations of performative utterances; on the former account, a performative utterance is an assertion, and may thus be true or false, depending on whether the speech act is felicitous or not, and on the latter account, the performative utterance itself constitutes the act in question, and is not an assertion, and therefore has no truth value.1 He presents the following argument against the descriptivist position. A speech act (I apologize, say) may be reported by using the same verb non-performatively: He apologized. This report, however, can be true even when the reported speech act was infelicitous in some way, e.g., He apologized, but to the wrong person. He claims that utterances of this type create a dilemma for the descriptivist position. If the assertion reported is considered to be true in this case, then its truth value does not depend on the success or failure of the performance.
Performative utterances as indexical expressions Comment on Harris
Authors: Spielmann Roger W.
Published: December 2008

Theorists of performatives are very much at odds with one another when it comes to the crucial question which has divided them into two camps; that is, are performative utterances true or false? One side, including Austin (1962), Black (1963), and Harris (1978), denies that the question is relevant, while the other side, including Hedenius (1963), Lemmon (1963), Wiggens (1971), and Åqvist (1972), insists that the question is of primary importance for understanding the use of performatives. These two camps have been termed, respectively, the ‘non-descriptive’ and the ‘descriptive’ interpretations. In a recent issue of this journal, Harris (1978) suggested that the descriptive interpretation of performatives is self-contradictory.
On implicational and distributional universals of word order
Authors: Hawkins John A.
Published: December 2008

This paper argues that the theory of Universal Grammar must include both implicational universals and universals of language distribution in the description and explanation of word order.

Implicational universals are of the form: if a language has some property (or properties) P, then it will also have some property (or properties) Q. These ‘if P then Q’ statements require that a language must not have property P without property Q (*P –O).
On the question of lexical regularity
Authors: Beard Robert E.
Published: December 2008

In a recent article on the indivisibility of ‘words’ (Sampson, 1979), Geoffrey Sampson, in arguing against the semantic decomposition of ‘vocabulary items’, concludes with a claim against lexical decomposability of derived items such as Nixonite, etc. One can hardly take issue, I think, with his argument against the purely semantic decomposition of lexical primes; however, it does not follow from this that the lexicon is characterized by unproductive, irregular rules or a total absence thereof: …it seems factually untrue that rules of derivational morphology (such as the rule for forming nouns in -ite) can be assimilated to semantically regular, productive ‘rules of grammar’ such as the rule for pluralizing nouns; the former rules are typically not fully productive, and the meanings of the words produced are not in general predictable (46).
A dischronic explanation for the origin of OVS in some Carib languages
Authors: Derbyshire Desmond D.
Published: December 2008

Derbyshire and Pullum (1981) report on the evidence they have accumulated during the past two years showing the likely existence of twelve languages with object-initial basic order (OVS or OSV). Such languages are contrary to what had been generally predicted in the literature on word order typology until 1977. All twelve languages are found in what might broadly be termed the Amazon basin of South America. Seven of the eight OVS languages belong to the Carib family: Apalai, Arekuna/Taulipang, Bacairi, Hianacoto-Umaua, Hixkaryana, Makúsi, and Panare. There is not much descriptive linguistic material available for any of these languages, other than Hixkaryana. What there is can be found listed in Derbyshire and Pullum (1979).
A diachronic look at the syllable: the case of Icelandic
Authors: Árnson Kristján
Published: December 2008

I. Like so many linguistic terms, the term syllable has been used in many different senses, and theoretical distinctions have been made, aimed at avoiding confusion. There is hardly any need to remind the reader of Pike's distinction between PHONETIC and PHONEMIC syllables: ‘the phonetic syllables must be analyzed into the structural phonemic syllables’ (Pike, 1947: 90). Although obviously beneficial, this division still leaves considerable room for confusion, both on the phonetic and on the phonological side. On the phonological side the syllable can be thought of as a unit of organization of smaller phonological units (cf. e.g. Bell (1977), Bell & Hooper (1978)) or as a unit defining the scope or environment for phonological processes, or as accounting for regularities of quantity and tonality (cf. e.g. Pike (1947: 90), and Hooper (1972)). On the phonetic side there are at least two approaches to the syllable. It has been looked on as defining units in speech production (cf. Stetson (1951), Catford (1977: 89–90)) or as a means of describing sonority variation in the phonetic signal (cf. e.g. Jespersen (1949/1934: 118–121)). This latter aspect relates to the perception of the linguistic signal by speakers and to the acoustic buildup of the phonetic medium. Finally, there are those who deny the usefulness of the concept altogether.
Towards an account of the possessive constructions: NP's N and the N of NP1
Authors: Hawkins Roger
Published: December 2008

1. Efforts to limit the power of transformations, and thereby reduce the class of possible grammars, have been concentrated in two areas: the conditions which restrict the application of the transformational rules, and the examination of the consequences of placing the burden of description on the non-transformational components of the grammar. Recent work on the non-transformational components has led to some interesting conclusions about how this power can be reduced. An article by Bresnan (1978) is a good example of this line of research. She cites a number of cases where transferring the burden of description from the transformational component to the lexicon and semantic interpretive components not only leads to a simplification in the from of the transformational rules, but also captures generalizations not adequately explained by transformations.
Wh-movement and unbounded deletion in Polish equatives
Authors: Borsley Robert D.
Published: December 2008

Chomsky (1977) argues that all constructions that apparently involve unbounded deletion rules obeying island constraints in fact involve successive cyclic wh-movement followed by deletion in COMP. Among the relevant constructions are English equatives. There is no direct evidence that they involve wh-movement. Polish equatives, however, often show quite clear evidence of the operation of wh-movement. It might be thought, then, that they provide some evidence for Chomsky's position. In this paper, I will argue that this is not in fact the case. I will argue that Polish equatives often involve not only wh-movement but deletion in S as well. I will then argue that they sometimes involve just deletion. Finally, I will argue that this deletion is unbounded and subject to island constraints. Clearly, if this is correct, Polish equatives, far from providing support for Chomsky' position, in fact provide important evidence against it.
On the underlying order of Early West Saxon
Authors: Reddick Robert J.
Published: December 2008

Recent work by Lightfoot (1976a, 1977) and Malsch (1976) has led to conflicting hypotheses about the underlying order of old English. Lightfoot hypothesizes that OE is an SOV language, while Malsch hypothesizes that it is a VO language. Although Malsch's argument is far more rigorous than Lightfoot's, both arguments are unconvincing because both suffer from a conspicuous lack of attention to the data available in surviving OE texts:Lightfoot asserts the nonexistence of constructions which do in fact exist (1977: 211), while Malsch cites only constructions drawn or elaborated from secondary sources (39, note 1). Furthermore, the two arguments are not directly opposed to each other. Lightfoot argues for a verb-final underlying order and an NP Postposing rule, while Malsch argues for a verb-initial underlying order and a Verb Postposing rule. Neither argues against the postposing rule of the other. At the same time, their only common assumptions seem to be that underlying representations of sentences have linear ordering and that surface auxiliaries in OE are derived from higher verbs.
Non-distinctive features and their use
Authors: Janson Tore , Schulman Richard
Published: December 2008

The basis for phonological analysis is the notion of distinctiveness. In the structuralist period, attention was focussed on distinctions between phonemes. Since the beginning of the generative period, the primary unit has rather been the distinctive feature. The fundamental notion remains the same. It is constituted by the idea that a phonetic difference is to be regarded as a phonological difference if and only if it is linked with a difference in meaning. Thus, in the final analysis, the evidence for distinctiveness is to be found in linguistic communication. If a certain phonetic distinction is regularly used to convey distinctions in meaning, it is phonologically distinctive.
Factuality and intonation
Authors: Oakeshott-Taylor John
Published: December 2008

Starting from the well-known difference betweenI ‵thought he was married (which he is)– where the complement is given a factual interpretation – andI thought he was ‵married (but he isn’t)– which is counterfactual – this article examines the syntactic, semantic, contextual and prosodic conditions under which factual and counterfactual interpretations can emerge. Factuality is distinguished from factivity, and concerns a person’s (usually the speaker’s) subjective assessment of whether the propositional content of a sentence or sentence fragment conforms or conflicts with his perception of reality. The modal nature of factuality is stressed, as is the contribution of tense and intonation to the emergence of factuality interpretations.
The syntax and interpretation of futurate conditionals in English
Authors: Haegeman Liliane , Wekker Herman
Published: December 2008

Defining the constraints on the use of the modalswillandwouldin futurateif-clauses in English poses problems to both descriptive and theoretical linguists. One ‘rule’ often referred to is that while futurewilland counter- factualwoulddo not normally occur in conditional sub-clauses withif, volitional and dispositionalwillandwouldcan be used in that context.

This paper attempts to account for this general rule and for the so-called exceptions to it in terms of two different syntactic positions ofif-clauses in the sentence. It is suggested that the contrast can be formalized within current versions ofX̄-theory.
Diachronic syntax and learnability: free relatives in thirteenth-century Spanish
Authors: Rivero María-Luisa
Published: December 2008

Diachronic change emerges from the construction of grammars by successive generations of learners by exposure to primary data. Learners receive little information concerning what is ungrammatical in their language. To propose learnable systems, linguists should use positive data and not depend on negative information (the learnability criterion). Learnability is relevant to historical linguistics under the view that links diachronic change to grammar construction by the learner. This perspective is used to establish the system of two types of free relatives in thirteenth-century Spanish (quanto que vs. quanto-constructions), and the changes that led to the disappearance of the first type in later centuries.
The semantics of grammatical categories: a dialectical approach
Authors: Bache Carl
Published: December 2008

In this paper I want to present a practical descriptive approach to the semantics of grammatical categories, especially of the binary type involving two forms only. In doing so, I hope to be able to attract the attention of linguists concerned with the structure of a comprehensive semantic theory of human language. Substitutional relations of a grammatical kind (as opposed to syntactic and lexical relations) are too often neglected in textbooks on modern semantics. For example, in Ruth Kempson's otherwise excellent introduction to semantic theory (Kempson, 1977), there is no mention of the semantics of grammatical categories at all. In my view, not only must such Substitutional relations be accommodated within a total theory of semantics – even on a narrow definition of the discipline – but they may provide important insights into the nature of meaning which will affect some of the current suppositions in semantic theory. In particular I shall attempt to shed light on the role of ‘subjectivity’ – a notion which is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore and which challenges the very common restriction among semanticists of the scope of semantics to just a truth-conditional component.
Two views of accent
Authors: Bolinger Dwight
Published: December 2008

The debate over determinism and free choice in linguistics is not likely to be settled in this or the next century. All we can do is try to shed some light on the issue from time to time, and perhaps define areas that are best described deterministically, and others where freedom reigns, in majesty if not supreme. Nowhere has the debate been more lively than in descriptions of English stress and accent. The latest – to which this essay is a response (and which can be consulted for chronological developments – there is no need to repeat them here) is Gussenhoven (1983), ‘Focus, mode and the nucleus’. It is a forthright endorsement of a deterministic view, with the high merit of a rich assortment of examples – many attested and all perfectly idiomatic. The case that Gussenhoven builds is a solid one, and as it is directed in part against a view that I have espoused for a long time and still believe to be correct, it requires an answer.