This paper examines opaque examples of phrase-level phonology taken from Chilean Spanish under the framework of Stratal Optimality Theory (OT) (Rubach 1997; Bermúdez-Otero 2003, 2019) and Harmonic Serialism (HS) (McCarthy 2008a, b, 2016). The data show an interesting double repair of the coda /s/ taking place at word edges. It is argued that Stratal OT is superior in modelling phonological processes that take place at the interface between morphology and phonology because it embraces cyclicity. Under this model, prosodic structure is built serially, level by level, and in accordance with the morphological structure of the input string. In this way, opacity at constituent edges can be solved. Stratal OT also provides insight into word-internal morphological structure and the domain-specificity of phonological processes. It is demonstrated that a distinction in this model is necessary between the word and the phrase levels, and between the stem and the word levels. As illustrated by the behaviour of Spanish nouns, affixation and the resultant alternations inform us about the domains to which both morphological and phonological processes should be assigned. Against this background, Harmonic Serialism embraces an apparently simpler recursive mechanism in which stepwise prosodic parsing can be incorporated. What is more, it offers insight into the nature of operations in OT, as well as into such problematic issues as structure building and directionality. Nevertheless, despite the model’s ability to solve various cases of opacity, the need to distinguish between two competing repairs makes HS fail when confronted with the Chilean data under examination.

This article reflects on a double interpretation of English constructions containing the combined expression will have to. As I will show, illocutions involving sentences of the type ‘NP will have to VP’ can be interpreted as either (i) predicting future enforcing circumstances that trigger a future obligation or (ii) reporting such circumstances as currently in force at speech time. Once I sketch the different semantic elements at play in a Kratzerian framework, I cast doubt on some current views on the so-called modal–tense interaction. As I will show, one way to fully account for the availability of both readings is by assuming a semantic temporal underspecification as to when the triggering circumstances in the conversational background are initially in force. This raises important theoretical caveats for semantic analyses in the field, particularly for those that equate the semantics of the future with prediction. As the article shows, such a widespread assumption can be contended by a dynamic account of obligational ascriptions, according to which their different illocutionary forces can be derived from the contextual change potential of its primitive (and admittedly underspecified) future semantics. Ultimately, the paper voices support for the view that future semantics must not be equated with prediction.

Sign-Based Construction Grammar (sbcg) is, on the one hand, a formalized version of Berkeley Construction Grammar (bcg), and, on the other hand, a further development of constructionist Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (hpsg). The volume edited by Hans Boas and Ivan Sag is the first book length presentation of the framework. Its centerpiece is a 130-page synopsis of the theory by Ivan Sag. The other contributions to the volume provide background, justification, case studies, an extension to diachronic syntax and a presentation of the FrameNet Constructicon. This review gives a guided tour of the framework, explaining its central notions and assumptions, as well as the notation in which they are cast. It also compares the sbcg framework with other types of Construction Grammar and with hpsg. The case studies are summarized and briefly evaluated.

This paper investigates aspectual meanings that resultative morphemes in Mandarin Chinese contribute to interpretations of the entire predicates, and in particular the culmination readings they bring out of the originally non-culminating accomplishments. Two resultative morphemes are studied: -wán and -diào. I argue that while both morphemes give rise to culmination readings, the culmination readings are derived in different ways. I propose that -wán expresses termination, which comments on the progress of an event. The culmination readings of the telicized accomplishments by -wán are obtained indirectly. By contrast, -diào expresses culmination, commenting directly on the resulting culmination state. The proposed analysis for the two morphemes is couched in the framework defined by Krifka (1989, 1992, 1998), which models the relations between events, individuals, and times as a series of homomorphic relations between mereological part structures. Following Zucchi & White (2001), I analyze -diào in terms of a maximalization over patient, which transfers mereological properties from the individual structure to the event structure, explaining the culmination reading, and -wán a maximalization over time, which transfers mereological properties from the time structure to the event structure, explaining termination, and then transfers the mereological properties to the individual structure, explaining the culmination reading.

I. In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to stylistic variation in linguistic description. Variation which used to be described as ‘free’ has lately been described as fitting within identifiable linguistic and/or social parameters. I discern three trends. In the first, variation that was previously ignored is incorporated into description in a fairly systematic way. An example of this is Harris' (1969: 7) claim that variation among the Spanish forms [esbjuðo], [ezbjuðo] and [ezβuðo] es viudo ‘he is a widower’‘not only CAN but MUST be described in terms of stylistic levels… it will be shown that careful examination of the kinds of alternation under discussion leads to some interesting questions about the form and organization of phonological rules’ (emphasis original).

A serious and widely recognized problem of the standard Binding Theory is that it has no non-circular definition of the crucial notions ‘anaphor’, ‘pronoun’ and ‘R-expression’. Burzio (1991) proposes a significant new characterization of these notions, based on their absolute and relative morphological content. Specifically, he proposes that different NP types can be distinguished by their Θ-feature content: anaphors lack Θ-features altogether, pronouns have Θ-features and no other features, and R-expressions have Θ-features plus referential information, as in (1). The Binding Theory can then be regarded as a single principle, stated in (2).