In this paper some data from Russian are presented and it is suggested, contrary to the proposals put forward by Lakoff & Peters (1966), that in the deep structure of Russian two types of coordination must be recognized, an ‘and’ type and a ‘with’ type. It is also suggested that the underlying ‘with’ coordinating element may sometimes be realized as i (‘and’) or as s (‘with’), and that the s may derive from an underlying ‘comitative’ case (cf. Fillmore, 1968: 81–83).

Our aim in this paper is to study the s-ø alternation found in pairs like côtecostal. As far as we know, the phenomenon has not been studied in detail by any generative phonologist. We have found in the literature some passing references to the question but all the solutions seem to be based on scanty evidence. In contradistinction to previous approaches, we have based our analysis on an exhaustive list of all the alternations in question. The source of our material is the Petit Robert (Rey et al., 1972), which includes approximately 50,000 words. We are perfectly aware of the fact that no French person knows/uses all these alternations and are therefore dealing with an ‘idealized’ speaker. But, since the solution we propose is heavily based on the morphological marking of words, it would be no blow to our analysis if one were to discover (as is possibly the case) that in a particular dialect of French very few of these forms are actually related.

This paper investigates the reason why aggressively non-D-linked items such as wh-the-hell (WTH) are allowed in swiping, but not in sluicing. Investigating the potential syntactic, semantic and prosodic licensors of WTH in sluicing and swiping in the British English variety, we conclude that syntactic or semantic constraints cannot be the source of the difference. Instead, we propose a novel prosodic account in which the WTH must satisfy the prosodic licensing condition that it cannot bear nuclear accent. We show that this is satisfied in swiping, but not in sluicing contexts. On the basis of the novel findings of an acceptability rating study of swiping, which reveal that both ‘given’ and ‘new’ prepositions are equally acceptable for British English speakers, we argue that the preposition is accentuated in this elliptical construction because it is structurally the deepest element. The licensing condition on WTHs in sluicing and swiping is therefore not mediated directly by the conditions on ellipsis, but by the particular prosodic distribution that a WTH happens to have in sluicing and swiping. We extend the account to similar constructions in Dutch.

This article investigates the morphosyntax of verbs of internally caused scalar change and the main facets of their meaning. Availing ourselves of primary evidence from Italian, French, and Spanish corpora, we argue that the verbs under scrutiny divide into three subclasses whose common denominator is that they encode ‘change by inner predisposition’ or change that is possible because of inherent propensities of specific entities. We understand inner predisposition as a feature of the content of the verbs investigated, which has relevance to the choice of the undergoer, alongside the cause of two of the subclasses. Apart from this feature verbs of change by inner predisposition are indistinguishable from other verbs of change. We argue against an agentive or generalized causative analysis, and we advance a proposal for the lexical semantics of representatives of each of the three subclasses and for the alternations in which they participate.

In a paper read at the Tenth International Congress of Linguists, Bucharest, 1967 (Bennett, forthcoming), I discussed the question of synonymy within the framework of the stratificational theory of language, taking examples from the area of English prepositions. The present paper has two aims. On the one hand, it incorporates the findings of more recent work on synonymy. Thus whereas, for instance, in the earlier paper two levels of synonymy were distinguished, it now seems necessary to recognize four or possibly five levels. On the other hand, the paper will attempt to set the discussion of synonymy in a wider framework by sketching the outlines of a semological description of English prepositions. To present such a description would be beyond the scope of the paper. I hope merely to indicate the general shape that the description might take. In addition to the remarks on synonymy there will be some discussion of polysemy, componential analysis and idioms. In particular it is hoped that a clear picture will emerge of the relationship between these various areas.

Light verb constructions (LVCs) in English and Romance languages are somewhat unique crosslinguistically because LVCs in these languages tend to have semantically similar synthetic verb counterparts (Zarco 1999): e.g. make an appearance and appear. This runs contrary to assumptions in linguistic theories that two competing forms are rarely maintained in a language unless they serve distinct purposes (e.g. Grice 1975). Why do English LVCs exist alongside counterpart synthetic verbs, especially given that synthetic verbs are arguably the more efficient form (Zipf 1949)? It has been proposed that LVCs serve an aspectual function (Prince 1972, Live 1973, Wierzbicka 1982, Tanabe 1999, Butt & Geuder 2001), as there are telic LVC counterparts (e.g. have a thought) of atelic verbs (e.g. think).  This proposal has been difficult to evaluate without a large-scale resource providing a markup of both LVCs and counterpart verbs. Addressing this gap in resources, the present research describes the development of guidelines for LVC annotation in the English PropBank (Bonial & Palmer 2015). The focus of this article is the subsequent analysis of these annotations, aimed at uncovering corpus evidence of what contexts call for the use of an LVC over a synthetic verb. The corpus study shows that the general function of LVCs is not an aspectual one and provides distributional evidence that the ease and variety with which LVCs can be modified is the general motivating factor for the use of an LVC.

Pillinger (1980) argues that the Latin accusative and infinitive construction provides evidence against some of the current assumptions of Relational Grammar (RG) and, 1to a lesser extent, the Extended Standard Theory (EST). I argue that, even if one accepts Pillinger's analysis of this construction – as I would, perhaps with less diffidence than Pillinger himself – then this analysis is completely neutral with regard to deciding between RG and EST and compatible with either.

A thorough examination of the nature of the phonological portion of the lexicon must address at least two crucial issues. One has traditionally been termed the abstractness controversy, which concerns itself with the issue of the level of representation, or whether lexical entries are at a surface phonetic, phonemic, systematic phonemic, or some other level. The second issue deals with the unit of representation, or whether lexical entries are in the form of morphemes, words, or some of each.