o. COMPARATIVE GERMANIC SYNTAX This volume contains 13 papers that were prepared for the Seventh Workshop on Comparative Germanie Syntax at the University of Stuttgart in November 1991. In defining the theme both of the workshop and of this volume, we have taken "comparative" in "comparative Germanic syntax" to mean that at least two languages should be analyzed and "Germanic" to mean that at least one of these languages should be Germanic. There was no require ment as such that the research presented should be situated within the framework known as Principles and Parameters Theory (previously known as Government and Binding Theory), though it probably is no accident that this nevertheless turned out to be the case. Within this theory, it is seen as highly desirable to be able to account for several differences on the surface by deriving them from fewer under lying differences. The reason is that, in order to explain the ease with which children acquire language, it is assumed that not all knowledge of any given language is the result of learning, but that instead children already possess part of this knowledge at birth (the innate part of linguistic knowledge will obviously be the same for all human beings, and thus this theory also provides an explanation of language universals). The fewer "real" (i.e."

The Semantics of Chinese Classifiers and Linguistic Relativity focuses on the semantic structure of Chinese classifiers under the cognitive linguistics framework, and the implications thereof on linguistic relativity and language acquisition. It examines the semantic correlation between a given classifier and its associated nouns. Nouns in Chinese, which are assigned specific classifiers according to their selected characteristics, reflect the process of human categorization. The concrete categories formed by the relationship between nouns and classifiers may serve to explain the conceptual structure of the Chinese language and certain underlying aspects of culture and human cognition. Song Jiang is Assistant Professor of Chinese for the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at university of Hawai'i at Manoa.

This book brings together many of Peter Culicover's most significant observations on the nature of syntax and its place within the architecture of human language. Over four decades he has sought to understand the cognitive foundations of linguistic theory and the place of syntactic theory in explaining how language works. This has led him to specific proposals regarding the proper scope of syntactic theory and to a re-examination of the empirical basis of syntactic analyses, which reflect judgements reflecting not only linguistic competence but the complexity of the computations involved in acquiring and using language. After a brief a retrospective the author opens the book with the Simpler Syntax Hypothesis, an article written with Ray Jackendoff, that proposes significant restrictions on the scope of the syntactic component of the grammar. The work is then divided into parts concerned broadly with representations, structures, and computation. The chapters are provided with contextual headnotes and footnote references to subsequent work, but are otherwise printed essentially as they first appeared. Peter Culicover's lively and original perspectives on syntax and grammar will appeal to all theoretical linguists and their advanced students.

The goals of this study are twofold. First, it investigates the internal structure of words and clauses in Standard Arabic (SA), in the light of recent developments of Government and Binding Theory (GB). Second, it argues for a specific theory of typological variation. SA morphology is essentially non-concatenative, but word formation is hierarchical. Unmarked word order is VS(O), but it alternates with SVO. Sentences are verbless as well as verbal. Arguments can be null. The rich and complex agreement system interacts significantly with word order, pronominal incorporation, and expletive structures. SA's productive Case system raises interesting issues for Case theory. The DP system exhibits intriguing complementary distributions between overt determiners, genitive complements, and possessive markers. Tense, Aspect, Modal, and negation properties interact in significant ways. Different Case checking strategies are licensed in the same functional domain. These descriptive ingredients, compared to those of Germanic and Romance in particular, provide new grounds for analyzing typologically related or non-related languages. Within the invariant system of principles and the set of parameter specifications provided by Universal Grammar, the burden of learning is placed on functional categories. A system of Multi-Valued Functional Parametrization is used to account for cross-linguistic variation. The focus of SA's own' descriptive problems turns out to raise interesting comparative and theoretical questions. Issues are framed within the GB model, but unnecessary technicalities are avoided. The book is accessible to linguists and students broadly interested in general, Semitic, and Arabiclinguistics, in addition to those concerned with the development of the GB field.

This is a collection of previously published essays on comparative syntax by the distinguished linguist Richard Kayne. The papers cover issues of comparative syntax as they are applied to French, Italian, and other Romance languages and dialects, together forming a strongly cohesive set that will be valuable to both scholars and students.

French Creoles: A Comprehensive and Comparative Grammar is the first complete reference to present the morphology, grammar and syntax of a representative selection of French Creoles in one volume. The book is organised to promote a thorough understanding of the grammar of French Creoles and presents its complexities in a concise and readable form. An extensive index, cross-referencing and a generous use of headings provides readers with immediate access to the information they require. The varieties included within the volume provide a representative collection of French Creoles from the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, including: Mauritian Creole, Seychelles Creole, Reunion Creole (where relevant), Haitian Creole, Martinique Creole, Guadeloupe Creole, Guyanese French Creole, Karipuna, St. Lucia Creole, Louisiana Creole and Tayo. By providing a comprehensive description of a range of French Creoles in a clear and non-technical manner, this grammar is the ideal reference for all linguists and researchers with an interest in Creole studies and in French, descriptive and historical linguistics.

This book provides substantial new results in a novel field of research examining the syntactic and semantic consequences of event structure. The studies of this volume examine the hypothesis that event structure correlates with word order, the presence or absence of the verbal particle, the ]/- specific] feature of the internal argument, aspect, focusing, negation, and negative quantification, among others. The results reported concern the telicising vs. perfectivizing role of the verbal particle; the syntactic and semantic differences of verbs denoting a delimited change, and those denoting creation or coming into being; evidence of viewpoint aspect in a language with no morphological viewpoint marking; the aspectual role of non-thematic objects; the source of the exhaustive identification' function of structural focus; the interaction of negation and aspect etc.

Available for the first time in book form, Prince and Smolensky's "Optimality Theory" is "the" seminal work in the field. This influential work:

- Defines grammatical well-formedness as optimality with respect to a ranked set of universal constraints

- Presents the theory both through examples and formally, emphasizing its core commitments: strict domination, the Markedness/Faithfulness distinction, strong universality of the constraint set, interlinguistic variation as variation in ranking

- Illuminates generalization patterns shared across empirically diverse phenomena ranging from epenthesis to infixation to complex dependencies among prominence, syllabification, stress and word-form

- Derives universals of basic syllable structure and constructs a prosodic theory based on multipolar scales, laying the groundwork for a domain-general approach to gradient interactions

- Shows how to obtain universal and language-particular inventories, identifies the role of optimality in structuring the lexicon, and deals with key foundational issues.

For the newcomer, this pivotal work serves as an excellent introduction to the principles and practice of Optimality Theory. For the professional audience, it will suggest many directions for further exploration and development.

According to Platonists, entities such as numbers, sets, propositions and properties are abstract objects. But abstract objects lack causal powers and a location in space and time, so how we could ever come to know of them? Cheyne presents a systematic and detailed account of this epistemological objection to the Platonist doctrine that abstract objects exist and can be known. Since mathematics has such a central role in the acquisition of scientific knowledge, he concentrates on mathematical Platonism. He also concentrates on our knowledge of what exists, and argues for a causal constraint on such existential knowledge. Finally, he exposes the weaknesses of recent attempts by Platonists to account for our supposed Platonic knowledge.

The aim of this syntactic study, first published in 1979, is to formulate part of a generative grammar of Mohawk. A generative grammar is a finite set of explicit rules which enumerate the sentences of the language and which automatically assign to each sentence its correct grammatical analysis or structural description. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

This book provides a description and analysis of a phenomenon that appears to be unique among languages that have been brought to the attention of linguists, namely the occurrence of endoclitics. Examination of this is important because it helps us to understand what a word is from a cross-linguistic point of view. The second part of the book shows how Udi came to be so different from other languages, and how in this sense it explains the phenomenon.

This set reissues 22 books on syntax, originally published between 1971 and 1994. Together, the volumes cover key topics within the larger subject of syntax, including reflexivization, morphology and syntactical theory. Written by an international set of scholars, particular volumes focus on languages such as French and Spanish, whilst other volumes are devoted specifically to syntax in the English language. This collection provides insight and perspective on various elements of syntax over a period of over 20 years and demonstrates its enduring importance as a field of research.

1. 0. V2 AND NULL SUBJECTS IN THE HIS TORY OF FRENCH The prototypical Romance null subject language has certain well known characteristics: verbal inflection is rich, distinguishing six per sonlnumber forms; subject pronouns are generally emphatic; and, when there is no need to emphasize the subject, the pronoun is not expressed at all. Spanish and Italian, for example, fit this description rather weIl. Modem French, however, provides a striking contrast to these lan guages; it does not allow subjects to be missing and, not unexpectedly, it has a verbal agreement system with few overt endings and subject pronouns which are not emphatic. One of the goals of the present work is to examine null subjects in two dialects of Romance that fit neither the Italian nor the French model: later Old French (12th-13th centriries) and MiddIe French (14th- 15th centuries). Old French has null subjects only in contexts where the subject would be postverbal if expressed (cf. Foulet (1928)), and Mid dIe French has null subjects in a wider range of syntactic contexts but does not freely allow a11 persons of the verb to be null. The work of Vanelli, Renzi and Beninca (1985) (along with many other works by these authors individually) shows that a number of other geographically proximate medieval dialects had similar systems, though it appears that there are significant differences in detail among them."

How do we find the right word for the job? Where does that word come from? Why do we spell it like that? And how do we know what it means?
Words are all around us - we use them every day to communicate our joys, fears, hopes, opinions, wishes and demands - but we don't often think about them too deeply. In this highly accessible introduction to English words, the reader will discover what the study of words can tell them about the extraordinary richness and complexity of our daily vocabulary and about the nature of language in general.
Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, the book covers a wide range of topics, including the structure of words, the meaning of words, how their spelling relates to pronunciation, how new words are manufactured or imported from other languages, and how the meaning of words changes with the passage of time. It also investigates how the mind deals with words by highlighting the amazing intellectual feat performed routinely when the right word is retrieved from the mental dictionary. This revised and expanded second edition brings the study of words right up to date with coverage of text messaging and email and includes new material on psycholinguistics and word meaning.
With lively examples from a range of sources - encompassing poetry, jokes, journalism, advertising and cliches - and including practical exercises and a fully comprehensive glossary, English Words is an entertaining introduction to the study of words and will be of interest to anyone who uses them.

`Peterson is an authority of a philosophical and linguistic industry that began in the 1960s with Vendler's work on nominalization. Natural languages distinguish syntactically and semantically between various sorts of what might be called `gerundive entities' - events, processes, states of affairs, propositions, facts, ... all referred to by sentence nominals of various kinds. Philosophers have worried for millennia over the ontology of such things or `things', but until twenty years ago they ignored all the useful linguistic evidence. Vendler not only began to straighten out the distinctions, but pursued more specific and more interesting questions such as that of what entities the causality relation relates (events? facts?). And that of the objects of knowledge and belief. But Vendler's work was only a start and Peterson has continued the task from then until now, both philosophically and linguistically. Fact Proposition Event constitutes the state of the art regarding gerundive entities, defended in meticulous detail. Peterson's ontology features just facts, proposition, and events, carefully distinguished from each other. Among his more specific achievements are: a nice treatment of the linguist's distinction between `factive' and nonfactive constructions; a detailed theory of the subjects and objects of causation, which impinges nicely on action theory; an interesting argument that fact, proposition, events are innate ideas in humans; a theory of complex events (with implications for law and philosophy of law); and an overall picture of syntax and semantics of causal sentences and action sentences. Though Peterson does not pursue them here, there are clear and significant implications for the philosophy of science, in particular for our understanding of scientific causation, causal explanation and law likeness.' Professor William Lycan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

'Markedness' is a central notion in linguistic theory. This book is the first to provide a comprehensive survey of markedness relations across various grammatical categories, in a sample of closely-related speech varieties. It is based on a sample of over 100 dialects of Romani, collected and processed via the Romani Morpho-Syntax (RMS) Database - a comparative grammatical outline in electronic form, constructed by the authors between 2000-2004. Romani dialects provide an exciting sample of language change phenomena: they are oral languages, which have been separated and dispersed from some six centuries, and are strongly shaped by the influence of diverse contact languages. The book takes a typological approach to markedness, viewing it as a hierarchy among values that is conditioned by conceptual and cognitive universals. But it introduces a functional-pragmatic notion of markedness, as a grammaticalised strategy employed in order to priositise information. In what is referred to as 'dynamic', such prioritisation is influenced by an interplay of factors: the values within a category and the conceptual notions that they represent, the grammatical structure onto which the category values are mapped, and the kind of strategy that is applied in order to prioritise certain value. Consequently, the book contains a thorough survey of some 20 categories (e.g Person, Number, Gender, and so on) and their formal representation in various grammatical structures across the sample. The various accepted criteria for markedness (e.g. Complexity, Differentiation, Erosion, and so on) are examined systematically in relation to the values of each and every category, for each relevant structure. The outcome is a novel picture of how different markedness criteria may cluster for certain categories, giving a concrete reality to the hitherto rather vague notion of markedness. Borrowing and its relation to markedness is also examined, offering new insights into the motivations behind contact-induced change.

This is the first book-length history of the English passive voice. It deals with clear identification of passive-related constructions. It provides comprehensive analysis of the grammatical voice system. It presents radical review of origins of the be- and get-passive.In this coherent historical development of the passive voice in English, the main argument deals not only with the passive per se, but also with its related constructions, which can play vital parts in identifying both functional and structural motivations for creating the passive.

This book presents unique insights into laryngeal features, one of the most intriguing topics of contemporary phonetics and phonology. It investigates in detail properties such as tone, non-modal phonation, non-pulmonic production mechanisms (as in ejectives or implosives), stress, and prosody. What makes American indigenous languages special is that many of these properties co-exist in the phonologies of languages spoken on the continent. Taking diverse theoretical perspectives, the contributions span a range of American languages, illustrating how the phonetics and phonology of laryngeal features provides insight into how potential articulatory and aero-acoustic conflicts are resolved, which contrastive laryngeal features can co-occur in a given language, which features pattern together in phonological processes and how they evolve over time. This contribution provides the most recent research on laryngeal features with an array of studies to expand and enrich the fascinating field of phonetics and phonology of the languages of the Americas.

The highly frequent word items TO and OF are often conceived merely as prepositions, carrying little meaning in themselves. This book disputes that notion by analysing the usage patterns found for OF and TO in different sets of text corpora.

This is the first book to provide an integrated view of preposition from morphology to reasoning, via syntax and semantics. It offers new insights in applied and formal linguistics, and cognitive science. It underlines the importance of prepositions in a number of computational linguistics applications, such as information retrieval and machine translation. The book presents a wide range of views and applications to various linguistic frameworks.

This volume edited by Tabea Ihsane focuses on different aspects of the distribution, semantics, and internal structure of nominal constituents with a "partitive article" in its indefinite interpretation and of potentially corresponding bare nouns. It further deals with diachronic issues, such as grammaticalization and evolution in the use of "partitive articles". The outcome is a snapshot of current research into "partitive articles" and the way they relate to bare nouns, in a cross-linguistic perspective and on new data: the research covers noteworthy data (fieldwork data and corpora) from Standard languages - like French and Italian, but also German - to dialectal and regional varieties, including endangered ones like Francoprovencal.

The work collected in this book represents the results of some intensive recent work on the syntax of natural languages. The authors' differing viewpoints have in common the program of revising current conceptions of syntactic representation so that the role of transformational derivations is reduced or eliminated. The fact that the papers cross-refer to each other a good deal, and that authors assuming quite different fram{: works are aware of each other's results and address themselves to shared problems, is partly the result of a conference on the nature of syntactic representation that was held at Brown University in May 1979 with the express purpose of bringing together different lines of research in syntax. The papers in this volume mostly arise out of work that was presented in preliminary form at that conference, though much rewriting and further research has been done in the interim period. Two papers are included because although they were not given even in preliminary form at the conference, it has become clear since then that they interrelate with the work of the conference so much that they cannot reasonably be left out: Gerald Gazdar's statement of his program for phrase structure description of natural language forms the theoretical basis that is assumed by Maling and Zaenen and by Sag, and David Dowty's paper represents a bridge between the relational grammar exemplified here in the papers by Perlmutter and Postal on the one hand and the Montague"

How does our knowledge of the language on the one hand, and of the context on the other, permit us to understand what we are told, to resolve ambiguities, to grasp both explicit and implicit content, to appreciate metaphor and irony? These issues have been studied in two disciplines: linguistic pragmatics and psycholinguistics, with only limited interactions between the two. This volume lays down the foundation for a new field: "Experimental Pragmatics." Contributions review pioneering work and present novel ways of articulating theories and experimental methods in the area.