‘Abduction’, a concept from the philosophy of Charles Peirce, has become extremely popular in linguistics in the last three decades. This article argues that the interpretation of abduction in (historical) linguistics is based on a critical misunderstanding: it relies on an aborted model, which was rejected by Peirce himself, and it conflates two incompatible frameworks (Peirce's early and late ideas), to create a picture that is entirely incoherent. In consequence, it puts linguists directly at odds with mainstream practice in philosophy and science. Moreover, as currently interpreted, the term ‘abductive change’ is neither adequate nor necessary for classifying linguistic innovations.

In this paper, we argue in favour of the NO IMPAIRMENT HYPOTHESIS, whereby L2 functional categories, features and feature values are attainable, and against the NO PARAMETER RESETTING HYPOTHESIS, according to which L2 learners are restricted to L1 categories and features, as well as against the LOCAL IMPAIRMENT HYPOTHESIS, which claims that the interlanguage grammar is characterized by inert feature values. An online experiment was conducted, investigating adult learners' knowledge of properties relating to clitic projections. Advanced learners of French (L1s English and Spanish), together with a native speaker control group, were tested on a variety of constructions involving clitics by means of the SENTENCE MATCHING procedure (Freedman & Forster 1985). L2 learners distinguished in their response times between certain kinds of grammatical and ungrammatical clitic placement, as did the native-speaker controls, suggesting the attainability of L2 properties distinct from the L1.

Recent work has ascribed the adverb effect, the reduction or elimination of the that-trace effect by the addition of an adverbial phrase, to an elaborated CP layer. However, additional observations about a variety of adverb effects with both positive and negative effects on acceptability, including some experimental data, suggest that (i) adverbs may undergo lexical adjunction to a complementizer and (ii) the CP layer may be contracting or folding in rather than expanding. This proposal facilitates explanation of an array of facts including the Comp-trace effect, the adverb effect and other aspects of the behavior of complementizers in relative constructions and in complement constructions.

A select set of English nouns can head adverbial NPs – NPs that can act as adverbs without being preceded by a preposition. These ‘adverbial nouns’ also can be modified by prepositionless adverbial non-wh relative clauses. An analysis is presented in a categorial grammar framework, employing a conjunctive type structure to describe the behavior of adverbial nouns. It is suggested that adverbial nouns select non-wh adverbial relative clauses as complements; lexical rules are written to allow such selection. Finally, some remaining issues are surveyed concerning adverbial nouns in particular and conjunctive categories in general.

Mark Aronoff & Janie Rees-Miller (eds.), The handbook of linguistics (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics). Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. Pp. xvi+824.