In this paper, we will argue that the LF Object Shift analysis of the infinite regress resolution of Antecedent Contained Deletion is untenable conceptually and empirically. Generalizing Baltin's (1987) CP Extraposition analysis, we will instead propose that any type of rightward movement, including NP and PP Rightward Shift, is available for the infinite regress resolution. Furthermore, we will show that our generalized rightward movement analysis explains a wider range of data than the LF Object Shift analysis. Finally, we will address a question as to why rightward movement, which is non-feature checking movement, is triggered/involved in Antecedent Contained Deletion. We will suggest a way to derive this property under the assumptions of Chomsky's (1993, 1995) Minimalist Program.

The paper explores the syllabic and segmental dimensions of phonological vowel disorder. The independence of the two dimensions is illustrated by the case study of an English-speaking child presenting with an impairment which can be shown to have a specifically syllabic basis. His production of adult long vowels displays three main patterns of deviance – shortening, bisyllabification and the hardening of a target off-glide to a stop. Viewed phonemically, these patterns appear as unconnected substitutions and distortions. Viewed syllabically, however, they can be traced to a single underlying deficit, namely a failure to secure the complex nuclear structure necessary for the coding of vowel length contrasts.

Massam (1992), challenging the view that the presence of an implicit argument is essential to middles, argues that middles should be defined in terms of genericity and modality. This paper shows that Massam's hypothesis is factually untenable. Genericity and modality are only typical, not essential, properties of middles. Furthermore, middles in Massam's conception do not form a natural class with middles as normally understood. Rather, the presence of an implicit argument is a defining characteristic, as is widely accepted.

It is further shown that in order to handle an implicit argument properly, middles need to be represented by conceptual structure in the sense of Jackendoff (1987a, 1987b, 1990). The proposed analysis of middle by means of conceptual structure accommodates even the implicit argument of middles that express specific events.

Recent work in Relevance Theory (henceforth RT) illustrates the coming of age of modern pragmatic scholarship in creating an environment in which a particular theory of pragmatics can be taken for granted, without explanation or justification, and an analysis of a phenomenon previously unaccounted for within that theory can be advanced. One is reminded of much of the recent syntactic work within GB/Principles & Parameters/Minimalist Theory: the dominance of the Chomskyan approach – particularly in certain geographic regions – allows researchers, for better or worse, to simply assume the correctness of the theory in their work and proceed to illustrate how that theory might (or must) be extended or modified to accommodate a new class of data. In this volume, Žegarac & Clark (1999) provide the latest illustration of a similar strategy in pragmatics: the correctness of RT is assumed and an analysis of ‘phatic communication’ proposed within that framework. On the one hand, this constitutes an advance for pragmatic theory, since until recently there was no comprehensive all-inclusive framework within which certain pragmatic generalizations could be stated. If nothing else, RT has served to raise a number of important issues surrounding the semantics-pragmatics interface, helping to crystallize the debate and make explicit many assumptions that had been either implicit or non-existent in other frameworks. In particular, RT work on scalar implicature/explicature and on echoic mention and metalinguistic negation (e.g. Carston 1988, 1995; Récanati 1989) has represented major advances in our understanding of these phenomena and their theoretical implications. Thus, whatever one may think of RT, it is a theory that must be taken seriously by anyone working in this area. On the other hand, we find that RT suffers from one of the principal afflictions of the aforementioned work in the GB/P&P/Minimalism mainstream: a remarkable failure to address, come to terms with, and incorporate the extensive previous literature on the topic under current consideration.

In Žegarac & Clark (1999) we try to show how phatic communication can be explained within the framework of Relevance Theory. We suggest that phatic communication should be characterized as a particular type of interpretation, which we call ‘phatic interpretation’. On our account, an interpretation is phatic to the extent that its main relevance lies with implicated conclusions which do not depend on the explicit content of the utterance, but rather on the communicative intention (where ‘depends on X’ means: ‘results from an inferential process which takes X as a premise’).

David Lightfoot,The development of language: acquisition, change, and evolution. (Maryland Lectures in Language and Cognition 1.) Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. Pp. xii+287.

The central thesis of The development of language is that there are no principles of grammatical change, so that ‘historicist’ or deterministic approaches to diachronic change are misguided. Instead, Lightfoot argues that language change can only be understood by taking the perspective of the ‘growth’ (i.e. acquisition) of an individual's biological grammar, which may end up with a different parameter setting from the parent's generation when the trigger experience changes. Such events of grammatical change are abrupt and unpredictable, and Lightfoot suggests that they can be understood better from the point of view of catastrophe theory and chaos theory than under a deterministic theory of history as was common in the nineteenth century.