I. I. In a paper dealing with the analogical elimination of allomorphy and the explanatory (in)adequacy of generative phonology in accounting for it, Hogg hypothesized that ‘a necessary condition for analogical change is that the alternation which is subject to the analogy must not be synchronically rule-governed’ (1979: 58). This observation was elevated to the status of a principle which was formulated as follows:

Analogical extension or levelling of some phonological rule can take place only if that rule is no longer present in the synchronic grammar of the language (Hogg, 1979: 8).

This paper presents a description and a theoretical analysis of agreement within coordination in Lamaholot (Austronesian), where the first conjunct agrees with the conjunction ‘and’. Conjunctive agreement is obligatory in the subject position but is optional in the object position. The analysis is couched in terms of markedness of case and proposes that the case of the subject (nominative) is unmarked compared to the case of the object (accusative), and that only unmarked case enables phi-features of the agreement control to be copied onto the agreement host. Apparent optionality is accounted for by manners of case spreading in coordination. Conjunctive agreement is also reported in the genetically unrelated but areally related language of Walman. Although conjunctive agreement originates in verbal agreement with the comitative function in both languages, it is shown that grammaticalization from the comitative to the conjunction is more advanced in Lamaholot, at least in terms of syntax and morphology.

A problematic feature of clitic positioning attested in a number of languages is the ability of a clitic to appear inside a syntactic unit of which it is not itself a part, apparently due to prosodic restrictions on its positioning. The influence of prosody on syntax presents a challenge for any formal account, particularly any that strives to respect a modular view of the grammatical architecture. I present an account of clitic positioning within a recently proposed model of the syntax–phonology interface that aims at full modularity, showing that it is indeed possible in such an architecture, and showing where and how prosody and syntax interact in this model.

In this paper, we wish to address a class of problems connected with deletion under identity in coordinated structures; more specifically, we will endeavour to state the constraints which block deletion under identity in coordinated structures. A number of rules effecting deletion in coordinated structures have been formulated in the last two decades; the best-known ones are Gapping (Ross, 1970) and Coordination Reduction (e.g. Koutsoudas, 1971).

The Survey of English Usage (see especially Quirk, 1968: 70 ff., 184 ff.) combines a corpus basis with data obtained by elicitation techniques which so far have taken the form of acceptability tests. Most of the latter type of work is done with aural (taped) input, the subjects making their responses in writing. The drawbacks in this process were acknowledged in Quirk & Svartvik (1966), hereafter QS, in connexion with the interpretation of responses to the instruction to make a sentence negative (pp. 95 f.), since a written response such as I haven't a car is ambiguous as between a negative sentence (I /haven't a càr#) and a denial of the corresponding positive sentence (I /hàven't a car#). It was therefore decided ‘to experiment with oral responses … through the use of a language laboratory’ (p. 104), in order both to collect data not available from the written responses and at the same time to preserve maximum similarity with the written-output experiment in having a group of subjects being tested simultaneously.

In this work we investigate the internal syntax and semantics of quantifier phrases (QP) involving cardinal numerals. Concentrating on a set of previously documented puzzles concerning Case and number agreement within the numeral phrase in Russian, we argue that these agreement patterns follow naturally if one recognizes three structural layers in a numeral-based QP: the countability layer, the number layer and the quantificational layer. Our central theoretical claim is that the countability layer is implemented as a (pseudo-)classifier structure whose morphological manifestation obeys a principle of syntactic ‘visibility’. Our specific claim for Russian is that, diachronically, this countability layer has emerged as a result of the loss of the dual number in the course of transition between Old and Modern Russian. We strengthen our conclusions with psycholinguistic evidence from a sentence completion study that tests Russian speakers’ sensitivity to the countability layer.