This paper examines tensions between the syntax of control and semantic resource sensitivity. Structure sharing of controller and control target leads to apparent RESOURCE DEFICIT under certain circumstances. An analysis is presented using Glue Semantics for Lexical Functional Grammar. It demonstrates that structure sharing and resource sensitivity can be reconciled without giving up or relaxing either notion. It is shown that the analysis can handle either property or propositional denotations for controlled complements. The analysis is extended to finite controlled complements, which raise the opposing problem of RESOURCE SURPLUS. A solution is proposed and its typological implications discussed. The syntax and semantics of control as structure sharing is compared to a recent anaphoric control analysis by Dalrymple (2001). Based on facts of exhaustive and partial control, the present analysis is argued to be superior.

Following Hale & Reiss' paper on the Subset Principle (SP) in phonology, we draw attention here to some unsolved problems in the application of SP to syntax acquisition. While noting connections to formal results in computational linguistics, our focus is on how SP could be implemented in a way that is both linguistically well-grounded and psychologically feasible. We concentrate on incremental learning (with no memory for past inputs), which is now widely assumed in psycholinguistics. However, in investigating its interactions with SP, we uncover the rather startling fact that incremental learning and SP are incompatible, given other standard assumptions. We set out some ideas for ways in which they might be reconciled. Some seem more promising than others, but all appear to carry severe costs in terms of computational load, learning speed or memory resources. The penalty for disobeying SP has long been understood. In future language acquisition research it will be important to address the costs of obeying SP.

This article argues that of English adjective–noun constructions involving associative adjectives (‘associative AdjNs’), some originate in the lexicon and others in the syntax. While in many cases such constructions are unambiguously and for identifiable reasons located on one side or the other of the lexicon–syntax ‘divide’, variation being possible only across speakers, a range of associative AdjNs is identified which must be simultaneously, and for the same speakers, of both lexical and syntactic provenance. There is therefore no lexicon–syntax ‘divide’: the two modules overlap.

In the first half of the twentieth century, English grammar disappeared from the curriculum of most schools in England, but since the 1960s it has gradually been reconceptualised, under the influence of linguistics, and now once again has a central place in the official curriculum. Our aim is not only to document these changes, but also to explain them. We suggest that the decline of grammar in schools was linked to a similar gap in English universities, where there was virtually no serious research or teaching on English grammar. Conversely, the upsurge of academic research since the 1960s has provided a healthy foundation for school-level work and has prevented a simple return to old-fashioned grammar-teaching now that grammar is once again fashionable. We argue that linguists should be more aware of the links between their research and the school curriculum.