Two Romanian nominalizations, the infinitive and the supine, are compared in Noun+Object (NO) and Noun+Subject (NS) structures, regarding their ability to yield e-(vent)/r-(esult) readings. The NO structures behave alike and yield e-readings. The two NS structures contrast sharply: the infinitive NS is always an r-nominal, the supine NS may be an e-nominal. This contrast between the infinitive and the supine follows from their aspectual properties. While the supine is [−Telic], and may project either an Object or a Subject in e-nominals, the infinitive is [+Telic], and REQUIRES the projection of the Object. This constraint may follow from the fact that in nominals Aspect and Case are checked in the same projection.

Two classic and previously unrelated problems are reconsidered for their implications for optimality theory and acquisition. The puzzle-puddle-pickle problem centers on the debate over children’s underlying representations and the characterization of interacting error patterns which, when lost, result in overgeneralizations. In response to the challenges that this problem poses, an optimality theoretic solution is offered that appeals to the second problem, the Duke-of-York gambit, which involves co-occurring generalizations with reverse effects. The solution avoids language-specific restrictions on input representations and characterizes the loss and introduction of errors by one mechanism. New insight is offered for when overgeneralization is (not) expected to occur.

The present article discusses the notion of variation in discourse as an essential characteristic of language and the linguistic parameters that can be used for its study. The article describes the different traditions in the study of variation and places special emphasis on the role of prosodic analysis in the study of spoken discourse. The study explores the use of discourse markers in the London-Lund Corpus and describes their linguistic variation by introducing the notion of APPROPRIATENESS. This notion, which combines the quantitative and qualitative presence of elements in discourse, is based on a mathematical index that can describe discourse variation with a sound systematic criterion.

The present paper shows that Right-Dislocation (RD) in Japanese shares a number of characteristics with scrambling, but nonetheless cannot be identified as rightward scrambling. The proposed solution to this apparent contradiction is that there is no direct syntactic movement of the right-dislocated phrase. Rather, the right-dislocated phrase is a remnant of an extra clause which is deleted (or sluiced) after scrambling. It is therefore concluded that RD involves leftward movement (scrambling) and that its rightward effect is only apparent. The proposed analysis is supported by a number of facts that have not previously been reported, including the distribution of adverbs, pronominal coreference, anaphor binding, idiom interpretations and wh-questions. The proposed analysis is also consistent with Kayne’s (1994) proposal that there are no rightward movement processes in syntax.

Donald Loritz, How the brain evolved language. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 227.

Lyle Jenkins, Biolinguistics : exploring the biology of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii+264.

In the course of reviewing recent books on the evolution of language and communication (Dunbar 1996, Hauser 1996, Deacon 1997) I have had occasion to note that relatively few writers on these topics know much about linguistics, and to wish that more of them did. I should have remembered the old adage that one shouldn't wish for things - one might get them.

For more than a century, linguists honored the Linguistic Society of Paris's ban on all discussion of language evolution; other disciplines went ahead with it regardless. Now that the centrality of language evolution to any study of our species is becoming apparent, linguists are desperately trying to play catchup, and the two volumes reviewed here both appeared in the last couple of years. Both authors are linguists, albeit hyphenated ones. Donald Loritz teaches computational linguistics at Georgetown University; his doctorate was in psycholinguistics. Lyle Jenkins works in the Biolinguistics Institute in Cambridge, MA; however, his doctorate was in unhyphenated linguistics. It would be difficult to find two authors whose ideas were more diametrically opposed.

Theodora Alexopoulou & Dimitra Kolliakou: On linkhood, topicalization and clitic left dislocation

Francis Cornish: ‘Downstream’ effects on the predicate in a Functional Grammar clause derivation

Andrew Spencer: Gender as an inflectional category

Ida Toivonen: A directed motion construction in Swedish

Z. Bao: Review article on MATTHEW Y. CHEN, Tone sandhi: patterns across Chinese dialects

R. Freidin: Remarks on basic syntax. Review article on P. CULICOVER, Principles and parameters: an introduction to syntactic theory; J. MCCAWLEY, The syntactic phenomena of English; A. RADFORD, Syntactic theory and the structure of English: a Minimalist approach; and I. ROBERTS, Comparative syntax

T. Langendoen: Review article on M. ARONOFF & J. REES-MILLER, The handbook of linguistics

S. S. Mufwene: Colonization, globalization and the plight of ‘weak’ languages: a rejoinder to Nettle & Romaine’s Vanishing voices. Review article on D. NETTLE & S. ROMAINE, Vanishing voices : the extinction of the world’s languages