This paper focuses on the Information Packaging notion of linkhood and provides a structural definition of this notion for Greek. We show that a combination of structural resources – syntactic (left dislocation), morphological (clitic duplication) and phonological (absence of nuclear accent) – are simultaneously exploited to realize linkhood in Greek, a generalization that can be captured in a constraint-based grammar such as HPSG, which permits the expression of interface constraints. We assume Vallduví's (1992) approach to Information Packaging, and Engdahl & Vallduví's (1996) implementation of the latter in HPSG, but deviate from Vallduví's work in adopting Hendriks & Dekker's (1996) revised definition of linkhood that relies on non-monotone anaphora. From an empirical point of view, our approach directly accounts for the invariable association of Clitic Left Dislocated NPs with wide scope readings, as well as a number of systematic differences in felicity conditions between Clitic Left Dislocation and other apparently related phenomena (Topicalization and Clitic Doubling). From a theoretical perspective, our analysis departs from syntax-based notions of topichood or discourse-linking and supports a definition that unifies linkhood with other anaphora phenomena. As such, it arguably overcomes previously noted problems for Vallduví's treatment of links as the current-locus-of-update in a Heim-style file-card system.

The article deals with the dynamic, retroactive effects within a clause derivation of various ‘downstream’ specifications (that is, at subsequent levels in the derivation) on the semantic structure and aspectual character of the predicator at the ‘nuclear’, ‘core’ and ‘extended’ predication layers within standard Functional Grammar (Dik 1997a) – specifically, the insertion of given types of argument expressions within the predicate frame and the adjunction of certain semantically marked types of level 1 and level 2 satellites. A third type of retroactive effect is produced via the assignment or otherwise of the pragmatic function ‘Focus’ to the syntactic exponent of a predicate, which results in the singling out of a given part of the latter's semantic structure to act as a predicator.

All these dynamic, retroactive effects on a predicator and the structures it projects assume a semantically transparent underlying predicate structure on which to operate; yet in the standard FG model, no such structure is available via the predicate frame, which forms the initial structure for the derivation of a clause. The article demonstrates the drawbacks of the strict separation of meaning definitions (lexical semantics) and predicate frames (semantically-based syntax) within FG in terms, precisely, of the perspicuous mapping between syntax and semantics. It proposes a semantically transparent alternative to the standard predicate frame, based on Pustejovsky's (1995) ‘Generative Lexicon’ approach to lexico-semantic structure.

Russian adjectives, especially participles, can be used as nouns denoting people, e.g. bol′noj/bol′naja ‘(male/female) patient’ from bol′noj ‘sick’, učaščijsja/učaščajasja ‘(boy/girl) pupil’, participle from the verb učit′sja ‘to learn, study’. These are unusual in that they formally reflect the sex of their referent by means of inflectional morphology. Moreover, many surnames inflect like adjectives and they, too, inflect for gender: Mr. Puškin, Čexov, Tolstoj, Dostoevskij but Ms. Puškina, Čexova, Tolstaja, Dostoevskaja. Lexemes such as ‘patient, pupil’ are genuine nouns and not just adjectives modifying null nouns. The latter type do exist and have different properties from converted nouns. Converted nouns and adjectival surnames thus form systematic gender pairs which are forms of a single lexeme. However, gender is not conventionally regarded as an inflection category of the kind which induces word forms of lexemes in this way, rather it is an inherent ‘classificatory’ property of nouns. The paper discusses the peculiar nature of this type of inflectional marking and provides an explicit analysis of the construction. On the semantic side, nouns such as bol′noj, učaščijsja have a similar representation to that of a phrase person who is sick/studies and we effectively have an instance of the poorly researched phenomenon of de-phrasal word formation. On the morphosyntactic side, the lexical entry of the deadjectival noun or surname shares crucial properties with 3rd person pronouns. The analysis raises questions about the nature of lexical categories (especially ‘mixed categories’) and the structure of lexical entries generally.

This paper introduces a Swedish construction, called THE DIRECTED MOTION CONSTRUCTION (DMC). The DMC is parallel to the English WAY construction, which has recently received considerable attention in a debate comparing constructions to lexical rules. The DMC is very productive, and must therefore be taken seriously by any grammatical theory. This paper gives a detailed description of the DMC, and formalizes it in two ways: as a construction and as a lexical rule. Although both formalizations are possible, the construction more straightforwardly captures the most interesting aspect of the DMC: the fact that the overall meaning cannot be tied to any one of its individual parts.

Daniel Nettle & Suzanne Romaine, Vanishing voices: the extinction of the world's languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. x+241.