Syllables without consonantal onsets may be invisible for stress-assignment, reduplication, or tone. Many authors attribute this behavior to some sort of prosodic deficiency, while having little to say about cases in which onsetless syllables act as well-formed constituents. In the Onset Prominence (OP) representational environment, the ambiguous behavior of onsetless syllables is explained by means of a single representational parameter. Prosodically active initial vowels are assumed to be specified for the Vocalic Onset (VO) layer of structure, a specification lacking in prosodically inert onsetless syllables. Diverse phonological implications of VO specification for KiKerewe, Eastern Arrernte, Tashlhiyt Berber and Polish are examined. In the case of Polish, phonetic data on the glottalization of initial vowels provide additional support for the representational proposal. Finally, the place of the OP environment within the context of modern phonological theory is discussed.

It is widely accepted that the semantic content of a lexical entry determines to a large extent its syntactic subcategorization or other contexts of occurrence. However, clarifying the precise extent to which this hypothesis holds has proven difficult and on occasion controversial. To maintain this hypothesis, scholars have in many difficult cases introduced syntactic diacritics in their lexical semantic representations, thereby running the risk of rendering it vacuous. Our answer to this challenge is two-fold. First, on the substantive side, we argue that the problem lies in the assumption that the semantic content of lexical entries consists of a recursive predicate-argument structure. In contrast, we claim that the semantic content of lexical entries can consist of a set of such structures, thus eschewing semantically unmotivated predicates that merely ensure the correct semantic geometry. Second, on the structural side, we suggest that the semantic content of words can idiosyncratically select one of those predicate-argument structures for the purposes of direct grammatical function assignment. We show that this hypothesis, which builds on independently motivated proposals regarding the form of underspecified natural language semantic representations, provides a clean account of linking phenomena related to several classes of predicators: verbs whose denotata require the presence of an instrument, the semantic role of French ‘adjunct’ clitics, commercial event verbs, the spray/load alternations, and lexical subordination constructions.

In this paper we consider middle-passive voice in Greek and Albanian, which shows a many-to-many mapping between LF and PF. Different morphosyntactic shapes (conditioned by tense or aspect) are compatible with the same set of interpretations, which include the passive, the reflexive, the anticausative, and the impersonal (in Albanian only). Conversely, each of these interpretations can be encoded by any of the available morphosyntactic structures. Specialized person inflections (in Greek and Albanian), the clitic $u$ (Albanian) and the affix -th- (Greek) lexicalize the internal argument (or the sole argument of intransitive in Albanian) either as a variable, which is LF-interpreted as bound by the EPP position (passives, anticausatives, reflexives) or as generically closed (impersonals, in Albanian only). The ambiguity between passives, anticausatives and reflexives depends on the interpretation assigned to the external argument (generic closure, suppression or unification with the internal argument respectively). In perfect tenses, auxiliary jam ‘be’ in Albanian derives the expression of middle-passive voice due to its selectional requirement for a participle with an open position. Crucially, no hidden features/abstract heads encoding interpretation are postulated, nor any Distributed Morphology-style realizational component.

This paper argues that Danish verb-second clauses have two structural instantiations and that each structure is associated with distinct information-structural properties. Information-structurally undifferentiated V2 clauses are realized as TPs, whereas information-structurally differentiated V2 clauses are CPs. The evidence for this correlation comes from the behavior of the overt VP anaphor det, which exhibits a complex, but principled, positioning pattern in V2 clauses. I develop a feature-driven analysis of V2 clauses that accounts for previously unnoticed restrictions on the initial position in declarative V2 clauses.

Cross-linguistically, quantified noun phrases (QNPs) trigger one of four agreement patterns: with the quantifier, with the noun, default agreement, or semantic agreement. This paper focuses on agreement alternations in Hebrew, and argues that they follow not from variations in hierarchical structure but from the availability of multiple means of assigning values to the QNP's features. Building upon the index-concord analysis of Wechsler & Zlatić (2003) and adapting it to the Minimalist framework, it is argued that certain agreement patterns are the result of the quantifier bearing a set of abstract features that do not match its morphologically-triggered ones. Variations in QNP agreement patterns are then argued to be subject to constraints at the interfaces of syntax with both semantics and morphology. Overall, it is claimed that even apparent cases of non-local agreement with non-nominative NPs do not really pose a counterexample to established models of agreement, and that this supports the view that the system of ϕ-features cannot be simply an unstructured bundle of morphological features.

Phonological models of feature geometry suggest that the internal structure of segments is highly articulated. Distinctive features are organized hierarchically within the segment, and this hierarchical organization is relatively stable across and within languages. Much recent work has been devoted to determining the precise location of place of articulation features within the hierarchy. In this study, the distinctive feature [lateral] is the focus of investigation. Though [lateral] is often considered a manner feature, it is usually associated with coronal articulations. By examining the behaviour of coronal and velar laterals in phonological rules and constraints, evidence emerges that [lateral] is a terminal feature of the coronal node within the feature tree.

This article reviews two important recent contributions to the theory of morphology, which take significantly different approaches to the subject. Both are centrally concerned with questions of morphotactics. Rice argues that morpheme order in Athapaskan is largely the consequence of universal principles of semantic scope (coded as syntactic structure). Stump argues for a conception of inflection based on the paradigm. There is virtually no overlap between the two books, yet each raises questions that are of great significance for the other. In this review I briefly evaluate each book and then sketch the possibility of a synthesis.

Analyses of word-meaning can usually be divided into those which assign a meaning to a word IN ISOLATION FROM a specific context of use, and those which regard the meaning of a word as being largely, if not entirely, DEPENDENT UPON a specific context of use. The ultimate expression of the latter ‘polysemantic’ approach is probably that of the later Wittgenstein who argued that ‘every difference in a word’s use is a consequence of and evidence for a difference in its meaning’ (Wertheimer, 1972: 49). One recent example of the former ‘monosemantic’ approach is that of Bolinger (1977) whose stated purpose is to ‘reaffirm the old principle that the natural condition of a language is to preserve one form for one meaning, and one meaning for one form’ (p. x); also, the proponents of lexicalism are likewise ‘monosemantic’ in inclination in that they stress the primacy of lexical units over the syntactic relations which exist between them. Both these approaches have their advocates, and it should be stated at the outset that neither is necessarily right or wrong; each can only be judged according to whether the phenomena it is used to interpret are thereby illuminated.

This paper argues that neutralizing phonological alternations are sensitive to how much homophony they create among distinct lexical items: neutralizing rules create fewer homophones than expected. Building on a case study of Korean by Silverman (2010), I compare the neutralizing rules of Korean to a large number of hypothetical alternatives generated by Monte Carlo simulations. The simulations reveal that the actual rules of Korean frequently create far fewer homophones than similar (but unattested) rules, even when the rules that are compared are controlled for the number of phonemic contrasts they eliminate. These results suggest that phonological patterns are sensitive not only to high-level contrasts among phonemes but also to contrasts among individual lexical items. The effect is most pronounced when homophones are not weighted by frequency, a result that adds to evidence in the literature that the relevant measure of lexical frequency for many lexicon-sensitive phonological patterns is type frequency, not token frequency.

It is a common experience in language study (and elsewhere) that a consideration of a few carefully chosen examples can allow us a neat, simple, even elegant solution; but that the more data we examine, the more complex the whole question becomes. In some such cases we are tempted to abandon discrete categories in favour of a ‘squish’ (Ross, 1972, 1975). English indirect object constructions seem to present this kind of problem.

The aim of this paper is to examine two constructions, It-Cleft Sentences (e.g. It is me who/that wrote the book) and Wh-Cleft Sentences (e.g. The one who wrote the book is me), which constitute a problematic area of contemporary research in grammar.

It-Cleft Sentences and Wh-Cleft Sentences (henceforth ICS and WCS, respectively) appear in a number of languages which are typologically different from each other, and have some, but not all, of their characteristics in common. In Malayalam, for example, in the configuration of the ICS, S¯ is not recognizable: cf. Mohanan, 1978. Both ICS and WCS are present in many European languages (although ICS seem to have a more limited geographic distribution) and in Chinese. In the Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew) only the WCS type occurs. The present paper will deal mainly with English constructions and will also present, at the syntactic level, a comparative analysis between the constructions in English and the corresponding constructions in the Romance languages (French, Italian and Spanish). This comparison is useful in that it allows us to study the existence of a field of variability in the syntactic properties characterizing the way these types of sentences are realized in European languages.

The syllable has been credited with hosting a wide range of segmental patterns in phonology. However, there is increasing evidence that many of these patterns have a broader prosodic scope than is suggested by established syllabic analyses. Non-rhoticity is one of a collection of r-related effects in English that illustrate this point. Some of these effects have to do with the distribution of r itself: it can appear in positions that can be specified syllabically only by enriching prosodic theory in undesirable ways. Others have to do with the influence r exerts on neighbouring segments, particularly coronal consonants and preceding stressed vowels. Specifying the phonological context of these segmental effects requires explicit reference to the foot and the word rather than the syllable.

Linguists referring to ‘fast speech’ and to ‘normal speech’ often do not share the same definitions of the two terms. ‘Fast speech’ is normally intended as increase in speech tempo that affects the normal/slow norm, but it is also recognized that ‘fast speech phenomena’ occur in casual speech that is not necessarily rapid, and that ‘casualness’ of speech is a complex sociolinguistic notion the components of which are hard to isolate (see, for instance, Dressler, 1974, and Vanecek et al, 1975, for a discussion of the correlation between decreased attention and phonological casualness, and other factors referred to in Dressler, 1975). It is not at all clear what ‘normal speech’ is either. It is usually identified with ‘maximally distinct/differentiated speech’, but as pointed out to me by Arnold Zwicky, this is probably not the case, since there are processes that apply to give 'careful‘ or ‘;emphatic‘ speech (as when the l in please is made syllabic). Zwicky believes that normal speech ‘is related to whatever level of representation (roughly the phonemic) figures in normal rhyming (hat and had will not count as rhymes, even if they are pronounced the same, while stepped and slept will count as rhymes, even if they are pronounced differently, say without the t in slept)’ (personal communication). This paper does not attempt to tackle the problem in its entirety; it will only deal with the tempo aspect of fast speech and with the theoretical implications of increase in rate of speech. The reason for concentrating on tempo is that it can be isolated more easily than the various factors, social and other, involved in casual speech. It will also be assumed that speech tempo is relative, i.e. that one man's normal rate of speech may be another man's fast speech tempo, and that although increase in speech tempo may sometimes result in increased attention and thus in retention of the overall level of formality (Vanecek et al, 1975), the common tendency is for increased reduction and assimilation with the increase in the rate of articulation.

It is well known that Semitic languages restrict the co-occurrence of identical and homorganic consonants in the root. The IDENTITY HYPOTHESIS attributes this pattern to distinct constraints on identical and nonidentical homorganic consonants (e.g. McCarthy 1986, 1994). Conversely, the SIMILARITY HYPOTHESIS captures these restrictions in terms of a single monotonic ban on perceived similarity (Pierrehumbert 1993; Frisch, Broe & Pierrehumbert 1997). We compare these accounts by examining the acceptability of roots with identical and homorganic consonants at their end. If well-formedness is an inverse, monotonic function of similarity, then roots with identical (fully similar) consonants should be less acceptable than roots with homorganic (partially similar) consonants. Contrary to this prediction, Hebrew speakers prefer root final identity to homorganicity. Our results suggest that speakers encode long-distance identity among root radicals in a manner that is distinct from feature similarity.

At first glance Reflexivization in Italian seems to obey the same restrictions we find in English. Thus, if we consider the proposal that reflexive pronouns and their antecedents must be clausemates in English, we find in Italian that the same clausemate condition holds and that for any two coreferential pronouns within the same clause, the second of them is a reflexive pronoun. If, on the other hand, we consider the proposal that a reflexive pronoun and its antecedent may be indefinitely far apart provided that certain circumstances are not present, such as an intervening specified subject or the reflexive's being in a tensed S to which the antecedent does not belong (as in Chomsky (1973)), again the same conditions hold for Italian Reflexivization; as illustrated in (I)–(3).

Existential sentences have usually been defined on the basis of their morpho-syntactic characteristics. In English, the term has been used to designate those sentences in which the unstressed, non-deictic there occurs. It has been further observed that most such sentences contain the verb be, an indefinite NP and a locative adverbial following there in that order. Despite this syntactic characterization, however, the term ‘existential sentence’ has been taken, erroneously, to refer to some semantic features of the sentence as well, and so it has been generally assumed that existential sentences always assert the existence of some entity.1