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.

Sluicing – the elliptical construction in which all of a constituent question goes missing except for the interrogative phrase – is commonly analyzed as involving movement of the interrogative phrase to Spec-CP followed by deletion of TP (Ross 1969, Merchant 2001). In this paper, I examine how well the movement-plus-deletion analysis extends to Farsi, a wh-in situ language that, surprisingly, has a sluicing construction nearly identical to its English counterpart. I argue that the interrogative phrase in Farsi sluicing escapes deletion not by wh-movement as in English but by a type of focus movement. This operation, which normally applies very generally and is optional, is restricted in sluicing contexts in two ways: (i) it is obligatory, and (ii) it only applies to interrogative phrases. I propose a formal implementation that integrates these two properties into the licensing requirement on deletion, advancing the current understanding of the syntax of sluicing.

In generative metrics, a meter is taken to be an abstract periodic template with a set of constraints mapping linguistic material onto it. Such templates, constrained by periodicity and line length, are usually limited in number. The repertoire of Classical Sanskrit verse meters is characterized by three features which contradict each of the above properties – (a) templates constituted by arbitrary syllable sequences without any overtly discernible periodic repetition: APERIODICITY, (b) absolute faithfulness of linguistic material to a given metrical template: INVARIANCE, and (c) a vast number of templates, ranging between 600–700: RICH REPERTOIRE. In this paper, I claim that in spite of apparent incompatibility, Sanskrit meters are based on the same principles of temporal organization as other versification traditions, and can be accounted for without significant alterations to existing assumptions about metrical structure. I demonstrate that a majority of aperiodic meters are, in fact, surface instantiations of a small set of underlying quantity-based periodic templates and that aperiodicity emerges from the complex mappings of linguistic material to these templates. Further, I argue that the appearance of a rich repertoire is an effect of nomenclatural choices and poetic convention and not variation at the level of underlying structure.

The study of adjectival diathesis alternations lags behind the study of verbal diathesis and nominalization. This paper aims to diminish the gap by applying to the adjectival domain theoretical tools with proven success elsewhere. We focus on evaluative adjectives, which display a systematic alternation between a basic variant (John was rude) and a derived one (That was rude of John). The alternation brings about a cluster of syntactic and semantic changes – in the semantic type of the predicate, its valency and the mode of argument projection. We argue that the adjectival variants are related by the joint application of two operators: a lexical saturation operator (also seen in verbal passive) and a syntactic reification operator (also seen in nominalization). The analysis straightforwardly extends to similar alternations with Subject- and Object-Experiencer adjectives (proud, irritating). Among its important implications are (i) lexical saturation is not restricted to external arguments (internal ones may also be saturated), and (ii) ‘referential’ (R) roles are not restricted to nominal predicates (adjectives may assign them as well).

This article shows how the Japanese negative expression nai ‘not’ changes its scope depending on whether it is overtly head-raised to T or not. In Japanese, overt Neg-head raising takes place when a negative head acts as a functional predicate, devoid of its lexical (i.e. adjectival) properties in an analogous way to the aspectual verbs have and be in English. When the negative head nai undergoes overt head raising, it takes scope over TP. In some cases, however, the scope of negation becomes narrower due to the absence of overt Neg-head raising. The data provide us with empirical evidence showing that overt head raising – the kind of functional predicate raising observed in English and elsewhere in Japanese – is instantiated at the level of syntax, rather than at PF.

This paper provides a relevance theoretic account of the semantics of the be going to construction in English, based on Klinge's (1993) model for the semantics of the modal auxiliaries, and in particular of will. The semantics of both forms will be accounted for in terms of the relation between linguistic representations of situations and cognitive domains. Finally the pragmatics of utterances of sentences containing will and be going to will be discussed.

A multiple-proposition theory is proposed, according to which a single utterance can express several distinct propositions. An utterance of “Jon, the idiot, missed the train” expresses the official proposition THAT JON MISSED THE TRAIN and the background proposition THAT JON IS AN IDIOT. It is argued that only the official proposition affects the truth-value of the utterance, while the background proposition(s) may be treated similarly to pragmatic presuppositions. The multiple-proposition theory helps us to defend the thesis that, in an utterance such as “Jon1 promised to come but the idiot1 missed the train”, the epithet the idiot must be understood as an attributive anaphor, for it inherits its value from Jon and attributes to Jon the property of being an idiot. It is argued that epithets in such constructions should be viewed in a way similar to quasi-indicators, insofar as the latter are also attributive anaphors. The quasi-indicator she herself in “Jane1 believes that she (herself)1 is rich” inherits its value from Jane and attributes an I-thought to Jane. In focusing on the similarities and differences between epithets and quasi-indicators, we can explain some alleged difficulties, difficulties which suggest that epithets cannot be anaphoric (e.g. “*Jon1 claimed/said/thinks/ … that the bastard1 was honest”). It is shown that the ungrammaticality of sentences like these rests on the fact that the epithet is embedded in what should be a de se attribution (e.g. “Jon1 claimed/said/thinks that he (himself)1 was honest”) while its nature is to contribute to the expression of a de re attribution. This helps us to understand the ungrammaticality of “*Jane1 said/thinks/promised/ … that the idiot1 will come” vs. the grammaticality of “Jane1 said/thinks/promised/ … that she (herself)1 will come” on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the ungrammaticality of “Jon1 ran over a man who was trying to give him (*himself)1 directions” vs. the grammaticality of “Jon1 ran over a man who was trying to give the idiot1 directions”.

It is now well established that creole language situations such as those that exist in West Indian communities like Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad, etc., are characterized by continuing variation resulting from increasing modification of Creole structures in the direction of the lexically-related model language. The pace of the modification depends in turn on such factors as the degree of social mobility and the strength of corrective pressures from above. In all such cases, however, there develops ‘a continuous linguistic spectrum of speech varieties… which includes all possible intermediate varieties’ (DeCamp, 1971: 28).

Massam (1992), challenging the view that the presence of an implicit argument is essential to middles, argues that middles should be defined in terms of genericity and modality. This paper shows that Massam's hypothesis is factually untenable. Genericity and modality are only typical, not essential, properties of middles. Furthermore, middles in Massam's conception do not form a natural class with middles as normally understood. Rather, the presence of an implicit argument is a defining characteristic, as is widely accepted.

It is further shown that in order to handle an implicit argument properly, middles need to be represented by conceptual structure in the sense of Jackendoff (1987a, 1987b, 1990). The proposed analysis of middle by means of conceptual structure accommodates even the implicit argument of middles that express specific events.

Inflectional affixes are sensitive to morphological properties of the stems of the verbs they attach to. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that the inflectional material is combined with both the verbal stem of simplex verbs and the verbal stem of particle verbs. It has been argued that this leads to a bracketing paradox in the case of particle verbs since the semantic contribution of the inflectional information scopes over the complete particle verb. I will discuss nominalizations and adjective derivation, which are also problematic because of various bracketing paradoxes. I will suggest a solution to these paradoxes that assumes that inflectional and derivational prefixes and suffixes always attach to a form of a stem that already contains the information about a possible particle, but without containing a phonological realization of the particle. As is motivated by syntactic properties of particle verbs, the particle is treated as a dependent of the verb. The particle is combined with its head after inflection and derivation. With such an approach no special mechanisms for the analysis of particle verbs are necessary.

Several restrictions on successive cyclic wh-movement appear not to be exclusively linked to general principles of the grammar, but seem to be in some sense lexically determined. It has been pointed out repeatedly that wh-movement of subjects and adjuncts out of complement CPs of factive verbs strongly contrasts with wh-movement of internal arguments out of these CPs (Rouveret, 1980; Kayne, 1981; Zubizarreta, 1982; Adams, 1985): (1) (a) *Who do you regret/understand/forget likes this book? (= Adams, 1985: (4b)) (b) *How did he deeply regret that his son had fixed the car? (c) ?Which article did you regret/understand/forget that I had selected?

Although this paper deals with Russian phonology, our aim is not to describe in detail any part of the phonological component of Russian (cf. Lightner, 1966 and forthcoming); rather, we are concerned here with demonstrating the explanatory adequacy of a modified framework of generative phonology.

The topic of this discussion is analogical change of a particular sort, namely that where, pretheoretically, meaning seems to have had a role to play in determining the direction taken by the change. Analogy is an area of linguistic change of the highest theoretical interest. No analogical changes can take place without the involvement of ‘performance’ factors in general, including a perceiving human agent as one of these (cf. Vincent, 1974; Anttila, 1977), for many analogical acts illustrate the human mind in a condition that is at the same time relatively free and relatively fettered. It is free in the sense that the inferential processes used in the cases that interest us are ABDUCTIVE (cf. Andersen, 1973: 775; but contrast Mayerthaler, 1980: 126–7); that is, given some facts, a law may be invoked which allows the reasoner to infer that something MAY, not MUST, be the case, and to act upon that possibility in a creative way. The basic data in this paper include instances of similarity between lexemes, a notion which will receive the closest scrutiny. In the changes we will examine, people appear to invoke a law-like principle to the effect that there is a close relation between similarity of form and similarity of meaning. And they infer, abductively, that cases of similarity in such instances may be failed examples of sameness, and accordingly may replace the state of similarity by one of sameness (cf. Panagl, 1982: 5). The result is therefore the fruit of not always unreasonable guesswork rather than of the logical security of deduction (or induction). The mind is fettered in the sense that it appears condemned to try to make something transparent, or at least formally transparent, out of what is linguistically obscure; its activity is thus constrained by the rest of the linguistic system with which it operates. It is in the condition of an electrician who is summoned to sort out a dangling wire and connects it up to the first other dangling wire that he or she finds.

A study of word order must take account of the different sets of criteria governing the position of elements and the extent to which the one or the other has a bearing on the order of elements in the languages investigated. It must consider whether word order is predetermined by grammatical rule and what measure of freedom is left to the speaker or writer to manipulate word order to conform to the communicative intention. The present study will mainly be concerned with the sentence opening elements and the position of the grammatical subject.

This paper presents computer simulations of language populations and the development of language families, showing how a simple model can lead to distributions similar to those observed empirically by Wichmann (2005) and others. The model combines features of two models used in earlier work for the simulation of competition among languages: the ‘Viviane’ model for the migration of peoples and the propagation of languages, and the ‘Schulze’ model, which uses bit-strings as a way of characterising structural features of languages.

This article investigates the types of palatal nasal decomposition from the perspective of three Slavic languages: Slovene, Upper Sorbian and Polish. The prepalatal nasal exhibits three different patterns of behaviour: retention, decomposition and depalatalization. Decomposition results in a cluster of the glide [j] and a nasal consonant. The details of this process are different in each of the three phonological systems considered, for instance, the process can yield either [jn] or [nj], and it can occur either in the onset or in the coda. Also the drivers for decomposition are different and include constraints defining permissible inventories as well as constraints governing assimilation. From the theoretical perspective, nasal decomposition raises the question of whether ident constraints should be bidirectional or unidirectional. It is concluded that the latter are indispensable.

Lieber (1980) provided a theory of the organization of the lexicon which has been extremely influential within current theories of morphology. However, one of her central suggestions, concerning the nature of phonological rules in the lexicon, has been largely ignored. Lieber (1980, 1982) considers allomorphic variation induced by relationships which are not true phonological rules, in that they refer to lexical or morphosyntactic features but which none the less seem to be statable in phonological terms. These constitute the bulk of morphologically conditioned alternations, particularly those which have the prime function of signalling morphological relationships. Such rules have been dubbed ‘morpholexical’ rules in the structuralist literature, and Lieber adopts this term, giving it a specialist technical interpretation within the Lexicalist theory she develops.

The Science of Language, published in the sixth decade of Noam Chomsky's linguistic career, defends views that are visibly out of touch with recent research in formal linguistics, developmental child psychology, computational modeling of language acquisition, and language evolution. I argue that the poor quality of this volume is representative of the serious shortcomings of Chomsky's recent scholarship, especially of his criticism of and contribution to debates about language evolution. Chomsky creates the impression that he is quoting titbits of a massive body of scientific work he has conducted or is intimately familiar with. Yet his speculations reveal a lack of even basic understanding of biology, and an unwillingness to engage seriously with the relevant literature. At the same time, he ridicules the work of virtually all other theorists, without spelling out the views he disagrees with. A critical analysis of the ‘Galilean method’ demonstrates that Chomsky uses appeal to authority to insulate his own proposals against falsification by empirical counter-evidence. This form of discourse bears no serious relation to the way science proceeds.

While the notion of naturalness or plausibility has been a tacit guiding principle for past generations of phonologists, the effort to accord the notion of naturalness a theoretical status and to incorporate this notion into the descriptive formalism of a linguistic theory was a major innovation by the generative school. In accordance with what we may refer to as the ‘formalness condition’, the generativist requires that the substantive naturalness of a phonological process be explicitly recognizable in the very formalism used to state the process. The lively interest in and the on-going search for a ‘natural’ phonology is very much in evidence, witness, e.g., the titles of papers presented at the 1971 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America.

With a few honourable exceptions, phonologists have, until recently, generally assumed the phonological component to be organized along completely different lines from the other components of the grammar. Phonological phenomena were mainly viewed as accidental, language specific, and unprincipled. Whereas some theoretical parallels between syntax and phonology have been drawn (cf. the role of the cycle in both domains and the extensive literature on ordering), there have been few attempts to see if principles of Universal Grammar could be found in phonology as well as in syntax and semantics. Increasingly, however, phonology is now being regarded as a system of principles along with parameters defining the class of human phonological Systems. In such a framework there are no rules of the sort: A → B/C→D. Phonological phenomena result from principles and parameters governing phonological representations and structures present in a particular language. Along these lines, recent work in phonology has suggested that Phonological Form (PF), like the other components of the grammar, is subject to certain fundamental principles. For example, it was proposed by Andersen and Jones in the early 1970s (and pursued by Ewen, Durand and others) that the relations of dependency that determine how syntactic constituents are organized, also determine how segments are grouped together in a given structure. For their part Lowenstamm & Kaye (1982) proposed that a theory of government could account for certain phonological processes such as vowel shortening in closed syllables. Stephen Anderson (1982) and Levin (1985) have proposed that X-bar principles govern the representation of syllables. Specifically, they have proposed that the Rhyme and the syllable as a whole are projections of the syllabic head, the Nucleus.