Notions of ‘head’ and ‘modifier’ have a long and respectable history in syntax, although they have changed considerably in recent years. But the application of similar notions to morphology is relatively new. The extension of these notions to morphology has been prompted by two developments:

(i) Intimations from dependency grammarians that their approach to language ought to be generalizable to morphology (Andersen, 1980); and, far more importantly

(ii) The development of lexicalist theories of word-formation using an X-bar notation.

One of the major innovations within post-SPE generative phonology has been the development of frameworks where phonological units are organized in a non-linear fashion. Taking autosegmental phonology (Goldsmith, 1976) as our main exemplar of such frameworks, we wish to address the following question: What is the appropriate interpretation of autosegmental representations? There is, of course, a further question about what we mean by INTERPRETATION: formal, phonetic or computational interpretation? Although we will concentrate on the first of these, we believe that all three aspects should be regarded as closely inter-connected and mutually constraining. The question of interpreting autosegmental representation has in fact been recently posed by Sagey (1988), and we shall take her proposal as our starting point. While it is uncontroversial to suppose that the relationship between units on a given autosegmental tier is one of temporal precedence, Sagey claims that it is more problematic to pin down what is meant by association between tiers. She argues, cogently we believe, that if association is taken to be a relationship of simultaneity between durationless units, then standard analyses of complex segments and gemination lead to logical inconsistency. Instead, association should be taken as temporal OVERLAP between units with duration.

A nonrestrictive relative clause (henceforth NRR) is shown in (I) and a restrictive relative clause (henceforth RR) in (2).

(1) The swans, which are white, are in that part of the lake.

(2) The swans which are white are in that part of the lake.

Example (1) implies that all the swans under discussion are white. Example (2) implies that the white swans are being distinguished from some other not white swans which are also under discussion. There are many superficial differences between restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses; in this paper I show that there is no need for construction-specific stipulations which distinguish between them. The differences arise from the fact that the RR is a modifier, while the NRR is not, and in fact has no syntactic relation to its host/antecedent. Co-indexing (involving a referential index) between the relative clause and its antecedent is central to this account. I examine the requirement that a relative pronoun must have an antecedent, which in the case of a NRR is the sole manifestation of the relationship between the relative clause and its host), and suggest that this holds at a level of discourse structure.

One of the less rewarding of our common interdisciplinary pursuits is lifting theoretical concepts from subjects not our own, and using them in contexts very distant from those they were intended for. Such borrowings often turn from theoretical claims into sloppy metaphors, leading to varieties of ‘vulgar X-ism’, the resuit of overenthusiastic appropriation with insufficient sense of the subtlety or precise applicability of the originals. Spencer's ‘Social Darwinism’, vulgar-Freudian or vulgar-Marxist literary analysis and sociology are nice examples. Linguistics, being less unique than linguists often think, is no exception: Praguian and neo-Praguian functionalism may be a kind of vulgar Darwinism, extending notions of ‘adaptation’ or ‘selective pressure’ to the inappropriate domain of language Systems (see Lass, 1980a). But every once in a while such transfers seem to work, like Darwin's borrowings from late eighteenth-century Scottish economie theory; if not always through direct applicability, then by focusing on new ways of interpreting old data, or providing a basis for linking disparate phenomena as instances of a new (putative) natural kind.

This paper explores the fit between syntax and semantics in one small corner of English. It addresses two related questions: To what extent is the distribution of bare infinitive (BI) complements, as in (1) and (2) below, semantically motivated?

(1) I saw/heard Mary slam the door.

(2) I made/let John cross the street.

In Roca (1988) I take to task Harris (1983) and Den Os & Kager (1986) and propose a novel approach to Spanish (nonverbal) word stress according to which (i) the algorithm is not quantity sensitive and thus differs from that of Latin, the parent language, (ii) the system does not obey the Uniformity of Algorithm Principle, (iii) the algorithm operates on the morphological stem, rather than on the whole word. As regards (i), I made the suggestion (418, ibid.) that the preferred paroxytone stress in native forms with penultimate closed syllables must be formalized as a lexical prohibition on extra-metricality markings in the given environments. Clearly, the formalization of this proposal and the exploration of its consequences are central to the analysis. Moreover, while the arguments for a relaxation of the Uniformity of Algorithm Principle still stand, departures from the principle are doubtless costly and therefore best avoided. Finally, in Roca (1988) there is no discussion of the consequences of (iii) above for the cyclic data presented in Harris (1983), the compatibility of which with (iii) is consequently unclear. All these facts warrant a re-examination of the issue, which I propose to carry out in the present paper.