bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Some problems for a case grammar of Latin and early Romance
Authors: Harris Martin
Published: December 2008

The present paper will assume, for the purposes of argument at least, the essential validity of the claims made on behalf of Case Grammar, in particular that ‘the case notions comprise a set of universal … concepts which identify certain types of judgements human beings are capable of making about the events that are going on around them, judgements about such matters as who did it, who it happened to, and what got changed’ (Fillmore, 1968: 24). We shall investigate in some detail the practicability of Fillmore's statement that ‘we should take the “case uses” as basic and regard the observable “case forms” as derivable from them by the rules of the grammar’ (Fillmore, 1971: 36), by attempting to establish, informally, some of the rules that would be needed to generate certain correct surface forms in Classical and Vulgar Latin and, in so doing, we shall examine, taking into account both the traditional distinction between ‘grammatical’ and ‘concrete’ cases (in particular, as propounded by Kurylowicz, 1964) and aspects of the localist hypothesis, most recently fully discussed by Anderson (1971), the extent to which the changes attested in Latin and early Romance are merely surface re-structurings, and to what extent they are more profound. Finally, certain implications for the theory itself, as at present formulated, are presented and briefly discussed.
The margins of morphophonemics
Authors: Sommerstein Alan H.
Published: December 2008

This paper will be concerned with the problem of drawing a boundary, within a process or so-called ‘generative’ model of phonology, between what Matthews (1972) has called MORPHOLEXICAL phenomena and MORPHOPHONEMIC phenomena.
Double ranks in a phonological hierarchy
Authors: Tench Paul
Published: December 2008

This paper is an attempt to apply to the phonological hierarchy in particular views expressed recently by Pike (Pike, 1972) on the nature of linguistic hierarchies in general. In a paper presented to the 11th International Congress for Linguistics, Bologna, 1972, entitledRecent developments in tagmemics, Pike spoke of the possibility of developing ‘paired levels’ or a ‘paired ladder’ in a hierarchy. His main concern in that paper, and in a similar paper presented to the German branch of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1971, was with the grammatical hierarchy. It is my aim in this paper to show that ‘paired levels’, or ‘double ranks’ as I shall call them, apply equally well in the phonological hierarchy, and that they offer interesting possibilities of (a) developing the notion of interpenetration of hierarchies and (b) broadening the field of general theoretical categories of language.
Three queries concerning one thesis concerning phonological representations
Authors: Vincent Nigel
Published: December 2008

The first thesis concerning phonological representations enunciated by Anderson and Jones (henceforth A&J)(1974: 8) is ‘that phonological representations are more highly structured than the standard theory would claim’, where the level of structure with which they are particularly concerned is that of bracketing into syllables. The principles in terms of which this bracketing is assigned are given as (I) (= their (19)):

(I) (a) Medial clusters are composed of a syllable-final preceding a syllable- initial sequence. (b) ‘Precede’ includes overlap where possible.

A couple of points of elucidation are necessary here. First, it should be noted that a previous formulation of (Ia) in the same paper (4) states: ‘We claim that medial clusters are combination of clusters that can be final in monosyllables and clusters that can be initial.’ This reference to word-final and initial clusters must be borne in mind if (Ia) is not to be construed as either circular or trivial.
Relative choronology: three methods of reconstruction
Authors: Chen Matthew Y.
Published: December 2008

In reconstructing protoforms and linguistic histories, many methods can and have been employed with varying degrees of effectiveness (cf. Bonfante, 1945, for a general discussion). For the specific purpose of establishing the time sequence of phonological changes according to which sound systems have evolved, traditionally two procedures have been most frequently followed: one is to sift the historical records for clues to the dates of linguistic innovations, and the other is to infer from the systematic correspondences between protoforms and their modern reflexes the internally motivated order of diachronic rules.
Modern Greek clitic pronouns and the ‘surface structure constraints’ hypothesis
Authors: Warburton Irene P.
Published: December 2008

In his (1970) article ‘Surface structure constraints in syntax’ Perimutter has argued that the restrictions on the combination of the weak atonic forms of the object pronouns in Spanish and restrictions on their order cannot be accounted for naturally either in the deep structure, by constraints on the phrase structure rules, or by constraints on the rules which introduce these pronouns.1 He concludes that a transformational generative grammar must be supplemented by positive output constraints which act as a filter accepting only sequences which match the filter and rejecting the rest as ungrammatical.
Grammar on mathematical principles
Authors: Harris Zellig
Published: December 2008

This paper presents a grammatical theory which has certain mathematical properties, and which produces the sentences of a language by means of two simple processes, word-entry and entry-reduction, with the meaning of each sentence being indicated directly by its construction. The reason for seeking a mathematical control on grammatical analysis lies partly in the inherent possibilities of such a connexion, and partly in the complex and somewhat haphazard nature of grammar, which makes one wonder if there is not something simpler and more principled involved. In the event, the system of grammatical analysis which is reached here is not an alternative to descriptions of grammatical patterns, but rather a complement to them; for in producing the sentences it locates and explicates those patterns as resultants of the two processes, but without cataloguing or arranging them.
Past tense transportation: a reply
Authors: Palmer F. R.
Published: December 2008

Huddleston (1977: 43), following some remarks by Poutsma (1926: 441–447), suggests that in (Huddleston's numbering)
(1) I could have got the money easily enough
there is past tense transportation (PTT), in that the CAN clause has ‘Unreal Mood (marked by the inflection on CAN) and underlying Past Tense’ and that the application of a transformational rule (PTT) allows ‘the Past Tense to be realized in the complement – by HAVE’. He proceeds to argue that the same is true of
(5) (i) If he could have swum, [he would certainly have survived].
Good intensions
Authors: Watt W. C.
Published: December 2008

1. There seems still to be some controversy over the matter of whether or not the putative presence in English of obligatory anaphoric references to overtly missing antecedents is of any service in resolving the question of where, if anywhere, these overtly missing antecedents are covertly present.

2. The matter at hand was originally raised by Postal (1969), who asserted that if English permitted anaphors to recover missing antecedents from ‘within’ or ‘beneath’ their sentences' surface antecedents, then the (syntactic) derivations of those sentences had better include somewhere beneath the surface whatever it was that was recovered. Having said this, Postal concluded that English was (with trifling exceptions) unhappily devoid of such anaphoric recovery, since prime examples where such recovery would be required – for example, (1) – were plainly ungrammatical.
Ablative–locative transfers and their relevance for the theory of case-grammar
Authors: Mackenzie J. Lachlan
Published: December 2008

It has been suggested by various proponents of case-grammar that locational and directional expressions are not distinct in underlying structure and that the interpretation of such expressions and, where relevant, the selection of the preposition that is to occur in such expressions are determined by properties of the verb on which each expression is dependent. Fillmore (1968: 25) writes:

There is a certain amount of evidence… that locational and directional expressions do not contrast but are superficial differences determined either by the constituent structure or by the character of the associated verb.
Unnatural phonology
Authors: Hellberg Staffan
Published: December 2008

The school of generative phonology ‘discovered’ two things. First, that both morphophonemic and allophonic rules could be formulated in terms of distinctive features (most of which had phonetic correlates). This was one of the reasons why both types of rules were brought together under the common name of phonological rules. Secondly, that these rules normally seemed to be natural, in the sense that they showed phonetic plausibility (related, e.g., to substantive properties of the vocal tract). This naturalness was attested by their tendency to appear in identical or similar form in several languages. For some time, then, the typical generative phonologist endeavoured to write all morphophonemic and allophonic alternations he worked with as natural phonological rules.
Phonological hypercorrection in the process of decreolization – the case of Trinidadian English
Authors: Winford Donald
Published: December 2008

It is now well established that creole language situations such as those that exist in West Indian communities like Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad, etc., are characterized by continuing variation resulting from increasing modification of Creole structures in the direction of the lexically-related model language. The pace of the modification depends in turn on such factors as the degree of social mobility and the strength of corrective pressures from above. In all such cases, however, there develops ‘a continuous linguistic spectrum of speech varieties… which includes all possible intermediate varieties’ (DeCamp, 1971: 28).
The question of rule ordering: some common fallacies
Authors: Koutsoudas Andreas
Published: December 2008

The main goal of linguistic research is to develop a theory of grammar, i.e. a set of universal principles to characterize human language. Since languages vary superficially, this goal is achieved only when it is shown that superficial differences among languages can be accounted for by the theory of grammar. Clearly, then, the more that superficial differences among languages can be accounted for by universal principles, the more the field will advance. This conclusion is best stated by Perlmutter (1971): … progress in linguistics depends on extracting as much as possible from grammars of particular languages and formulating general principles from which the facts of particular languages will follow as automatic consequences….
The sound structure of verb roots in modern Hebrew
Authors: Morgenbrod H. , Serifi E.
Published: December 2008

I. SOUNDS IN MODERN HEBREW Hebrew shorashim – the triliteral roots – have already been analysed from many points of view, for example in Morgenbrod & Serifi (1976, 1977, 1978). The aim of this article is an examination of the sound structure of shorashim.

In general we can divide the consonants which form the shorashim into two different types; concerning (a) the manner of articulation (e.g. plosives, nasals, etc.); and (b) the place of articulation (e.g. bilabials, labiodentals, etc.).

In this study we have concentrated on position of articulation and ignore manner of articulation.

In Figure I the consonants forming the shorashim are related to the different kinds of sounds according to Wendt (1961).

In order to investigate the relationship between the sounds it is convenient to establish so-called compound matrices with a computer. All computation was done by a program in COBOL running on the SIEMENS System 4004. As material for our analysis we took 2443 shorashim from the sources Barkaly (1972) and Even-Shoshan (1972).
Falls and rises: meanings and universals
Authors: Cruttenden Alan
Published: December 2008

The study of intonation has gone through phases in which it has been fashionable to ascribe the meaning of intonation to one particular sort of function.1 Most traditionally that function has been grammatical (see, e.g., the earliest British attempts at intonation analysis (e.g. Butler, 1634) and many recent textbooks on English language teaching). More recently (i.e. since the second world war), speakers' attitude has often been taken as most important (e.g. Pike, 1945; Kingdon, 1958). In the light of current fashion, the discourse function is often seen as most important (e.g. Brazil,, 1975, 1978; Pilch, 1977).I argue in this article that intonation operates with its own set of meanings which are of higher abstraction than those of grammar, attitude or discourse; and that it is only at a lower level that these meanings of higher abstraction become relevant to one or more of these functions (in so far as the functions can in any case be clearly separated). Such a hypothesis is relevant to the question of how intonation is acquired by children (where the real problem for investigators has always been WHAT exactly is being acquired). It is also important to questions of cross-dialectal intonational translation (whether across social or regional boundaries) and also to possible intonation universals.
Separating phonology from syntax: a reanalysis of Pashto cliticization
Authors: Kaisse Ellen M.
Published: December 2008

I. A pervasive, though not always explicit assumption of transformational grammar has been that syntactic and phonological rules form separate, discrete units in the organization of grammar; that phonological rules are not ordered among syntactic transformations, but rather apply in a block at the end of the syntactic derivation.1 Chomsky and Halle (1968) go even further in this separation, arguing that the surface structure is not the immediate input to the phonological component, but first undergoes certain ‘readjustment rules’, such as insertion of word boundaries. I have argued elsewhere (Kaisse, 1977) that this added step is unnecessary, and that there are in fact certain inter-word phonological processes that require the full information present in the labeled bracketing of the surface structure. However, my proposal is not a radical departure from the standard theory, in that it remains an INTERFACE model, in line with that proposed in Pullum and Zwicky (to appear). The claim remains that all syntactic rules apply before all phonological rules. In the case of word-internal phonological rules this is perhaps not crucial, but for rules of external sandhi, it is very important, both empirically and theoretically. For if we give up the requirement that no phonological rule apply during a syntactic derivation, we greatly increase the power of our theory of grammar and give up the ability to predict on a universal basis, the order of application of two rules, one phonological and the other syntactic.
Paradigms and transderivational constraints: stress and yod in Modern Greek
Authors: Nyman Martti
Published: December 2008

The present paper1 will be concerned with some descriptive and theoretical issues connected with Glide Formation (GF) and Stress Placement (StrP) as well as with the interplay of these rules in the ‘phonological component’ of Modern Greek (MG). These problems have recently been discussed by Irene Warburton whose article (1976) will serve as a point of reference.

Warburton's paper consists of two major parts of rather unequal strength. The first section (‘The relationship between stress and vowel length’, 260–268) makes a good case against attempts to condition the MG stress rule(s) phonologically by setting up never-surfacing distinctions of vowel length. It is also meritorious plea for the view that morphological conditioning ‘does not necessarily introduce irregularity in the language’ (Warburton, 259), as far as the rule makes reference to ‘a natural class of items… that can be subsumed wihin a single morphological feature (e.g. Past, Plural, etc.) that is independently available’ (l.c.).
Cause, causer and causee: a semantic perspective
Authors: Wali Kashi
Published: December 2008

In recently proposed analyses of the causee's case (Aissen, 1974; Cole, 1976; Comrie, 1976) it has been generally assumed that: (a) causatives are underlyingly bisentential with a structure such as s[X cause s[Y to do something (run, hit, jog, … ]s]s; (b) the causative merger with its complement verb erases the grammatical relation of the complement subject; and (c) the case of the derived NP (i.e. the causee) emerging from the complement subject is determined by some universal grammatical principles of higher order.1 On the basis of a cross-language study, Comrie (1976a), for example, has suggested that the case of the causee follows from two main syntactic principles: the Doubling constraint and the Case Hierarchy (CH). The doubling constraint prevents the primary subject and object relations from duplicating in simple structures. The case hierarchy, which feeds on the doubling constraint, demotes the causee to Direct, Indirect, or Oblique Object (DO, IO, OO) position with each increase in the number of complement arguments of the causative construction. Thus if the complement clause is without an object, the causee positions itself as DO, the highest unoccupied position on the hierarchy. If the complement DO is already present the causee moves to IO, and if both DO and IO positions are filled, the causee demotes to OO NP whose nature under CH is unspecified. Turkish supposedly represents a paradigm of this operation.
The passive in English, German and Russian
Authors: Beedham Christopher
Published: December 2008

It is usually assumed that English has two aspects, the perfect and the progressive. I would like to suggest, however, that there are in English not two but three aspects – the perfect, the progressive and the passive.

The most common description of the (actional) passive is one which derives sentences containing be+ past participle from an underlying transitive active structure. In a description of this kind there are several defects of a theoretical nature which reveal themselves in three main areas. The first problem area is the set of verbs which are apparently transitive but which nevertheless do not passivize, for example in English have, suit, resemble, in German haben ‘have’, überkommen ‘come over’, erfordern ‘require’ (see Steube & Walther, 1972: 20–22).
Performatives and the descriptivist's dilemmas
Authors: Taylor Talbot J. , Wolf George
Published: December 2008

With friends like Edmondson (1979), the descriptivist needs no enemies. The descriptivist's dilemma which Harris (1978) drew attention to was a dilemma about the assignment of truth values to performative and corresponding non-performative utterances. Edmondson's appeal to an obscurely drawn distinction between semantics and pragmatics is simply irrelevant to this issue. The semantic theory with which Edmondson saddles the unfortunate descriptivist makes his position, if anything, worse.
Aspect and Aktionsart: towards a semantic distinction
Authors: Bache Carl
Published: December 2008

The Slavonic notion of ‘vid’ (= ‘aspect’) has recently received much attention from the viewpoint of general linguistics. Not surprisingly, perhaps, some of the major contributions to the study of aspect as a general metalinguistic category are offered by linguists who are anxious to treat aspect in terms so general that the category applies to as many specific problem areas in non-Slavonic languages as possible (such as the opposition between the so-called progressive and non-progressive forms in English and the opposition between the imparfait and the passé simple in literary French). However, in my view, a satisfactory assessment of aspect in non-Slavonic languages can only be arrived at if we obey the following two conditions: (1) the general metalinguistic category of aspect must be defined independently of problem areas in non-Slavonic languages; (2) the relationship between aspect and other categories traditionally associated with the verb (especially tense and Aktionsart) must be specified.
Why Hungarian isn't as extrinsic as Vago thinks
Authors: Coates Richard
Published: December 2008

The industry of explaining away apparent cases of extrinsic rule-ordering in phonology has been in recession recently. Kenstowicz and Kisseberth, in a recent textbook (1979), make rather soothingly conservative noises about ordered-rule solutions. In this lull, during which (it is clear) ordered-rule solutions are still reckoned to be a possibility, Vago's claim (1977) to be able to substantiate such a position has gone unchallenged.
On English sentence stress and the nature of metrical structure
Authors: Giegerich H. J.
Published: December 2008

This essay is concerned with a section of the suprasegmental phonology of English that has traditionally been called ‘sentence stress’: a domain that goes beyond the simple word and its accent, covering prominence relations within lexical compounds and syntactic phrases. Some almost commonplace assumptions are usually made about sentence stress in the phonological literature of English: first, that the distinction between compound stress and phrasal stress leads to a phonological contrast, so that in a compound noun likeblack boardthe left-hand constituent is the stronger one whereas in a phrase,black boardfor example, the right-hand one is. Second, that this prominence differentiation consists of a further contouring of the main stresses of the simple words involved so that word stress serves as input for sentence stress differentiation, as inGérman tèachervs.Gèrman téacher. Also frequently observed is a class of exceptions to this second assumption: thethìrteen méncases, where the primary stress of a word in isolation,thirtéen, gets shifted in certain contexts for rhythmic reasons.
The descriptivist and performatives (again)
Authors: Edmondson Willis J.
Published: December 2008

Taylor and Wolf (1981) seek to show that Edmondson (1979) makes the position of the descriptivist ‘if anything, worse’, and that the dilemma for the descriptivist posed by Harris (1978) is ‘inescapable’. The authors seek to facilitate discussion by analysing my theory ‘rather more clearly’ than I managed to myself, and in doing so establish that its claims are ‘either contradictory or absurd’ (329).
Eliminating the feature [lateral]
Authors: Spencer Andrew
Published: December 2008

The feature [lateral] has a very limited morphophonemic or classificatory role which makes its presence in the universal phonetic feature inventory questionable. A mode of elimination is suggested which involves (i) treating all laterals as [+ distributed]; (ii) limiting [distributed] as a distinctive feature to continuants; (iii) redefining [anterior] in terms of [labial], [apical] and [dental]; (iv) analysing approximant rhotics as glides (Kahn, 1976); (v) adopting Halle and Stevens' re-analysis of [coronal]. This also provides a natural characterization of retroflex sounds and of sibilants. A conceptual problem in child phonology is discussed in the light of the above proposals.
Purposive vagueness: an evaluative dimension of vague quantifying expressions
Authors: Powell Mava Jo
Published: December 2008

Extending Montague's (1974) framework, Barwise and Cooper (1981) argue that some generalized expressions (which I shall call vague quantifying expressions), such as most, many ana few, correspond not to quantifiers, but to determiners within noun phrases. They argue that we need not determine the meanings of these expressions by logic; rather, we may draw upon an idea similar to the one we employ when interpreting the meaning of the quantifier Qxø(x), that is, we may appeal to an underlying topology for their interpretation (1981: 161). Similarly, they invoke one of the ‘simplifying assumptions often made in model theory’; namely,
… that one has a fixed context which determines the meaning of the basic expressions. We can think of this context as providing an interpretation for non-logical determiners… We shall assume… that there is a rich context held fixed that determines the PRECISE MEANING [my emphasis here] for the basic expressions, even those like ‘most’, ‘many’ and ‘few’. We refer to this as the fixed context assumption…

The fixed context assumption is our way of finessing the vagueness of non-logical determiners. We think that a theory of vagueness like that given by Kamp (1975) for other kinds of basic expressions could be superimposed on our theory (1981: 163).
Two views of accent: a reply
Authors: Gussenhoven Carlos
Published: December 2008

Bolinger (1972) argued against the notion that the occurrence of sentence accents can be explained on the basis of syntactic structure, a position taken by, among others, Chomsky & Halle (1968) and Bresnan (1971, 1972), at least with regard to a (putative) corpus of sentences with ‘normal intonation’. Bolinger's chief argument against this ‘syntactic’ position was his richly supported observation that sentence accents function independently as markers of information content, and that therefore an approach that derives them from anything other than the intention of the speaker is misguided. In my own approach to the description of the position of sentence accents the view that sentence accents are the expression of the speaker's communicative intentions is fully endorsed. The issue in ‘Two views of accent’ (above, pp. 79–123) is no longer whether sentence accents are derived from syntax, but to what extent the particular word that a sentence accent is placed on is the unit on which these communicative intentions focus. For Bolinger the relation is direct: ‘accents mark individual words focused for their informativeness’, where ‘informativeness’ is subordinate to ‘interest’, which in turn shares with ‘power’ the assignment of accent. In his article, Bolinger criticises an alternative approach exemplified in Gussenhoven (1983) in which the relation is indirect.1In this approach, which builds on work by Schmerling (1976), Ladd (1980) and others, the speaker is assumed to translate his communicative intensions into choices from a number of linguistic options, most importantly into a focus marking of the semantic constituents in his sentence (fragment). Sentence accent assignment rules translate these choices (again, mainly the focus marking) into sentence accents on particular words. I will adopt the term ‘highlighting’ for the former approach, and will refer to the latter as the ‘focus-to-accent’ approach.
On some claims of Atomic Phonology
Authors: Wheeler Max W.
Published: December 2008

Atomic Phonology is a theory constraining phonological rules and phonological components of grammars which has been developed largely by Daniel Dinnsen in a number of papers since 1978. The basic principles of Atomic Phonology are set out in the following quotation:

(1) The theory of atomic phonology maintains that all linguistic variation requiring distinctly varied formulations of phonological rules is predictable from a set of atomic rules and universal principles of grammar… Atomic rules are entirely independent rules of grammar which are presumed to be the most basic, most specific rules that can be motivated on empirical grounds… Atomic rules thus specify all the necessary initial conditions from which any correct variation on that process for any natural language can be predicted by universal principles. Non-atomic rules are dependent on atomic rules. The dependence on atomic rules derives from the requirement that non-atomic rules are all and only those rules which are complements of atomic rules or complements of their complements. The complement relation may be defined as follows: Two rules are complements… if just those commonly shared (identical) features in the structural descriptions of the two rules are sufficient to define precisely the same set of input relations defined by the two rules jointly (Dinnsen; 1979: 31).
Relativethat– a centennial dispute
Authors: Van Der Auwera Johan
Published: December 2008

But it would only be fair to add that there is still an essential difference betweenthe hope that never diesandthe hope that it was all wrong. (Van der Laan, 1929: 28)
Verb phrase deletion in English: a base-generated analysis
Authors: Napoli Donna Jo
Published: December 2008

Sentences (1) and (2) have traditionally been related by a process that is called Verb Phrase Deletion (VPD).

(1) If I wanted to collect bottles, I would collect bottles.

(2) If I wanted to collect bottles, I would.

The earliest analyses of this phenomenon suggested that (2) was derived from (1) by a syntactic deletion rule (hence the ‘deletion’ in the name of the process – cf. Ross (1969a)). Later (Jackendoff, 1972; Wasow, 1972; Fiengo, 1974; and Williams, 1977a, among others), it was suggested that a null anaphor was generated in the base followingwouldin (2), and that the semantic component read this anaphor as meaningcollect bottles, hence accounting for the synonymy of (1) and (2). A third possibility is that (2) is generated in the base with nothing followingwould, woulditself serving as a proform forwould collect bottles. And fourth, (2) could be derived from (1), leavingwouldas a proform, in a process resembling pronominalization more than deletion (perhaps ‘proverbalization’).
On the predictiveness of Natural Morphology
Authors: Dressler Wolfgang U.
Published: December 2008

1. Natural Morphology as represented in the forthcoming volume by Dressler, Mayerthaler, Panagl & Wurzel (1985) came into being about 1977 as an attempt to create a counter-part to Stampean Natural Phonology and to develop and systematize Jakobsonian reflections on morphological universals. In this paper I will present and exemplify some ideas and findings of Natural Morphology, of course from my own specific point of view.
Government and code-mixing
Authors: Di Sciullo Anne-Marie , Muysken Pieter , Singh Rajendra
Published: December 2008

The aim of this paper is to argue that the process of code-mixing is constrained by the government relation that holds between the constituents of a sentence. The government constraint replaces a number of specific constraints that have been proposed in the literature to account for apparently ‘impossible’, ‘ungrammatical’ or ‘non-occurring’ types of intra-sentential switches. Code-mixing is a form of linguistic behaviour which produces utterances consisting of elements taken from the lexicons of different languages. Some examples are given in (1).
Allegro rules in colloquial Thai: some thoughts on process phonology
Authors: Lodge Ken
Published: December 2008

As part of an investigation into rapid speech and its rule-based processes, I want to present an analysis of colloquial spoken Thai and show how different tempi can be related to one another. I also want to see whether the processes displayed by colloquial Thai fit into the general picture of phonological processes which has emerged over the past 15 years or so (roughly Stampe, 1969, onwards) within different theoretical frameworks. In particular I shall try to relate my findings to the increasingly accepted notions of richer phonological structure now being envisaged (e.g. Clements & Keyser, 1983 – tridimensional; Goldsmith, 1976 a & b – autosegmental; Liberman & Prince, 1977 and Kiparsky, 1979 – metrical; Anderson & Ewen, 1980, and Durand, 1986 a – dependency).
Is the Paradigm Economy Principle relevant?
Authors: Nyman Martti
Published: December 2008

This paper is meant as a contribution to historical morphology, although it takes the form of a critique. What will be criticized is a particular proposal, made by Carstairs (especially, 1984b), to look upon PARADIGM MIXTURE as a cause of morphological change. An issue not unrelated to this proposal is the use of PARADIGM ECONOMY (Carstairs, 1983) as a teleological principle in accounting for morphological change. We will show that paradigm economy is likely to be irrelevant to historical linguistics.
The accentuation of intransitive sentences in English
Authors: Faber David
Published: December 2008

This article will be concerned with the accentuation of two types of sentence in English: straightforward intransitive sentences, like (1), and intransitive sentences embedded in the frame It's just NP V-ing, like (2),
(1) The DOOR slammed.
(2) It's just the DOOR slamming.
Arguments for morpholexical rules
Authors: Spencer Andrew
Published: December 2008

Lieber (1980) provided a theory of the organization of the lexicon which has been extremely influential within current theories of morphology. However, one of her central suggestions, concerning the nature of phonological rules in the lexicon, has been largely ignored. Lieber (1980, 1982) considers allomorphic variation induced by relationships which are not true phonological rules, in that they refer to lexical or morphosyntactic features but which none the less seem to be statable in phonological terms. These constitute the bulk of morphologically conditioned alternations, particularly those which have the prime function of signalling morphological relationships. Such rules have been dubbed ‘morpholexical’ rules in the structuralist literature, and Lieber adopts this term, giving it a specialist technical interpretation within the Lexicalist theory she develops.
Cognate objects and the Case-filter
Authors: Jones Michael Allan
Published: December 2008

The main concern of this paper is sentences like the following containing so-called ‘cognate objects’: (1) (a) John died a gruesome death. (b) Harry lived an uneventful life. (c) Bill sighed a weary sigh.
What is lenition?
Authors: Bauer Laurie
Published: December 2008

Most phonological textbooks and treatises do not define lenition or weakening, as it is also called. Instead they provide a list of examples of processes which they wish to term ‘lenitions’ or ‘weakenings’. It is then hoped that the reader will deduce a correct definition. This is what is done in, for example, Lass & Anderson (1975: 150) and Sommerstein (1977: 228). One of the few available definitions of lenition is to be derived from Vennemann's definition of relative weakness (cited in Hyman, 1975: 165): ‘A segment X is said to be weaker than a segment Y if Y goes through an X stage on its way to zero.’ According to this definition, lenition is primarily a diachronic process affecting the sound structure of languages. It may also have synchronie reflexes (such as initial consonant mutations in the Celtic languages), but these are called ‘lenitions’ by an extension of the term from diachrony.
In defence of the autosegmental treatment of nonconcatenative morphology
Authors: Haile Alemayehu , Mtenje Al
Published: December 2008

The aim of this paper is to defend the autosegmental account of nonconcatenative morphology originally proposed by McCarthy (1979, 1981), which has been seriously challenged by Hudson (1986). It is argued that an autosegmental analysis of nonconcatenative morphology such as that of Arabic still remains a better alternative than what Hudson proposes. We first present a brief overview of McCarthy's theory of non-concatenative morphology. We then review Hudson's criticisms of such an autosegmental approach to Arabic morphology and we end up by showing why his reanalysis does not constitute a better alternative than the criticized autosegmental account.
Gapping and grammatical relations
Authors: Hudson Richard A.
Published: December 2008

This paper will be concerned with the analysis of sentences like those in (1), which I think are all uncontroversial examples of the construction that is generally called ‘gapping’.
Lexical phonology and sound change: the case of the Scottish vowel length rule
Authors: McMahon April M. S.
Published: December 2008

The key assumption in the standard generative approach to historical linguistics (King, 1969) is that each sound change is incorporated directly into the native speaker's grammar as the final phonological rule, moving up gradually into the grammar as further changes are implemented. Restructuring of underlying representations by later generations during acquisition is theoretically permitted, but infrequently invoked, with the result that the historical phonology of a language will be almost directly mirrored in the order of its phonological rules. The only extractable generalizations are then that the ‘highest’ rules will correspond to the oldest changes, and that a sound change and the rule into which it is converted will tend to be identical or at least show a high degree of similarity in formulation. This approach casts no light at all on the problem of the implementation of sound change.
The indivisibility of words
Authors: Sampson Geoffrey
Published: December 2008

Many contemporary linguists hold that an adequate description of a natural language must represent many of its vocabulary items as syntactically and/or semantically complex. A sentence containing the word kill, for instance, will on this view be assigned a ‘deep syntactic structure’ or ‘semantic representation’ in which kill is represented by a portion or portions of tree-structure, the lowest nodes of which are labelled with ‘semantic primitives’ such as CAUSE and DIE, or CAUSE, BECOME, NOT and ALIVE. In the case of words such as cats or walked, which are formed in accordance with productive rules of ‘inflexional’ rather than ‘derivational’ morphology, there is little dispute that their composite status will be reflected at most or all levels of linguistic representation. (That is why I refer, above, to ‘vocabulary items’: cat and cats may be called different ‘words’, but not different elements of the English vocbulary.) When morphologically simple words such as kill are treated as composite at a ‘deeper’ level, I, for one, find my credulity strained to breaking point. (The case of words formed in accordance with productive or non-productive rules of derivational morphology, such as killer or kingly, is an intermediate one and I shall briefly return to it below.)
Intonation and the assessment of information1
Authors: Taglicht J.
Published: December 2008

1. It is now a commonplace that one of the functions of intonation in English is to divide a discourse into ‘units of information’ and to structure these units by singling out within each one a focal part which contains what the speaker is presenting to the listener as ‘new’, in the sense of ‘newsworthy’ (Halliday, 1967;Quirk et at., 1972; Bolinger, 1958, 1972). The remainder of the information unit (if there is a remainder - some units are all focus) is said to contain ‘given’ information.2According to some versions of the theory, many information units – in fact the majority of those with ‘unmarked tonicity’ (Halliday), or with the focus in the ‘neutral position’ (Quirk et at.) – are ambiguous in structure, and the choice between two or more structural possibilities is made in accordance with the context. The principle is illustrated in the following examples, in which the A-sentences provide the context, the nuclear syllable is marked with an accent, and the focal unit is in capitals (Halliday's term for the focal unit is the ‘domain of focus’;Quirk et al.speak of the ‘new element’ or the ‘unit marked as new’)
Backwards anaphora in discourse context
Authors: Carden Guy
Published: December 2008

Most of the time a pronoun follows its antecedent, as in (Ia); less often the pronoun comes first, as in (Ib):

(1) (a) The woman who is to marry Ralph will visit him tomorrow. (Forwards Pronominalization; coreferent elements in italics)

(b) The woman who is to marry him will visit Ralph tomorrow. (Backwards Pronominalization)

In elementary syntax classes we account for these ‘Backwards Pronominalization’ cases by building something like the Langacker (1969)/Ross (1969) structural condition into our Pronominalization rule.
Syntactic variation and dialect divergence
Authors: Harris John
Published: December 2008

The problem of how to model syntactic variation has received much attention over the last few years. Some of the well-known difficulties stem from attempts to extend to the syntactic level quantitative techniques which were originally developed to handle phonological variation. In particular, the application of the sociolinguistic variable model to the syntactic domain has come in for a good deal of criticism (e.g. Lavandera, 1978; Romaine, 1981). According to the classical Labovian formulation, all variants of a given variable must share ‘sameness of (cognitive) meaning’ (1972a: 271). Considerable doubts have been voiced about whether this requirement can consistently be met at the syntactic level. The problem is thrown into even greater relief when it comes to studying the sort of syntactic variation that occurs in situations of interface between standard and vernacular varieties. It has not generally been noted that assuming direct semantic equivalence between standard and nonstandard syntactic variants presupposes that they are embedded in structurally identical grammars. That is, apparently alternating standard and vernacular forms are simply treated as distinct surface realizations of the same underlying structure. The justification for this approach rests squarely on the belief that it is possible to offer a structural definition of the intuitively available concept of ‘dialects of the same language’. According to what we might call the PANLECTAL IDENTITY HYPOTHESIS, dialects of a single language are considered to share a common grammatical‘core’ and differ only in matters of low-level realization (e.g. Agard, 1971). Variation arising out of interface between dialects that are allegedly related in this way is thus describable in terms of variable rules which operate at low levels of realization.
Be going to and will: a pragmatic account
Authors: Haegeman Liliane
Published: December 2008

In the literature on English tense usage, expressions of futurity such as

(1) (a) I will/shall leave next week.

(b) I'm going to leave next week.

have already received a lot of attention, especially so in the pedagogical descriptive tradition of English linguistics (cf. Close, 1977; Haegeman, 1981, 1983; Leech, 1971; Quirk et al., 1985; Palmer, 1974, 1979; Wekker, 1976, etc.). Although these accounts are attractive, they raise further questions because most of them do not propose to deal with the problem against a formal theoretical background. As a consequence, the rules formulated to describe the use of shall/will or be going to in (1) tend to be intuitive and often do not really allow any decisive choice to be made in many instances of usage. On the other hand, Reichenbach type analyses of tense interpretation are usually mainly concerned with the general problem of tense representation and treat both examples in (1) as illustrations of future tense without detailed discussion of the contrasts between them.
On the representation of diphthongs in Frisian
Authors: Booij Geert
Published: December 2008

Frisian is well known for the fact that it has a very rich inventory of vowels and diphthongs. In addition to nine short vowels and their long counterparts, it also has schwa, five falling diphthongs which end in a high vowel, and six centralizing diphthongs, some of which alternate with what traditionally are called rising diphthongs (cf. Zantema, 1984), the so-called breaking.
The syntax of participial adjuncts in Eastern Bengali
Authors: Van Der Wurff Wim
Published: December 2008

In this article I will discuss the syntactic properties of participial adjuncts in Eastern Bengali. From a GB-point of view, these constructions are quite interesting, because they can contain a nominative which is apparently not assigned by AGR, and because they show a quite intricate pattern of possibilities for coreference and disjoint reference, with some seemingly arbitrary differences among the three types of adjuncts. In Section 2, I shall present the empirical data for these constructions. In Section 3 I will discuss the relevant general syntactic principles of Eastern Bengali, specifically those responsible for Case-assignment, word-order,pro-drop (including ergative verbs) and binding properties. In Section 4, I will show that the characteristics of the participial constructions, including the apparently haphazard binding properties, follow from the general syntactic principles of Eastern Bengali, if we assume one simple statement for each type of adjunct. No further construction-specific stipulations need be made. To the extent that the analysis I propose can be upheld, it will constitute indirect support for the GB-mechanisms that are crucially involved in it. Apart from various principles of configurationality and binding, I will make use of the idea that there is no abstract AGR, in these cases at least, and also of the analysis ofpro-drop as a silent clitic phenomenon, proposed in Safir (1985). It is of course a fact that the principles of grammar I appeal to still need to be investigated more carefully, and may have to be modified on the basis of data not yet taken into account or accurately analyzed. However, as they stand, the relevant principles of GB-theory appear to be able to account for the Eastern Bengali facts I discuss here. Apart from these more theoretical concerns, this paper naturally has an important descriptive component too, which I hope will make it also interesting to linguists working in a different theoretical framework and may stimulate linguists specifically concerned with Bengali to explore further the intricascies of this area of Bengali grammer.
Change of state and valency
Authors: Labelle Marie
Published: December 2008

The goal of this article is twofold. First, I explore the hypothesis that a number of regularities in the distribution of the two types of inchoative constructions with verbs of change of state in French, the superficially intransitive construction and the reflexive construction (illustrated in (1)–(3)), can be captured by an analysis whereby monovalent verbs of change of state may project the Patient argument to the subject or to the object position. When the Patient argument is projected to the subject position (as in (1a) and (3a)), the construction is unergative. When it is projected to the object position, the construction is unaccusative (as in (1b)–(3b)). Verbs of change of state in French diner as to whether they may enter an intransitive inchoative construction (1), a reflexive inchoative construction (2) or both (3).
Does English really have case?
Authors: Hudson Richard
Published: December 2008

Does English have morphological case (as opposed to abstract Case)? Evidence is presented which suggests that it may be a completely case-less language like Chinese, contrary to the widely held view that the distinct pronoun forms and the ‘genitive’ 's involve morphological case. The existence of case in English has recently been accepted almost without question, but the question at least deserves serious discussion as it is easy to find alternative analyses. According to the analysis offered here, I and me are both personal pronouns whereas my, mine and 's are possessive pronouns; and the difference between I and me, like the one between my and mine, is handled by a very specific and local lexical rule which is sensitive to the syntactic structure but does not involve case.