This study is a semantic and pragmatic analysis of the Norwegian right-detached particle så, which occurs exclusively with sentence fragments. The framework of description is relevance theory, a cognitively based theory of communication whose objective is to account for how we are able to understand utterances and to make ourselves understood, in spite of the fact that the linguistic code that we use vastly underdetermines what we mean, and even what we say in the strict sense (truth conditions). It is argued that så encodes a procedure for the addressee to follow in his inferential processing of the linguistic signal. The lexical entry for så contains an instruction to the addressee to contextually activate one or more positive propositions which resemble the one asserted by the utterance of the så-fragment, and to arrange them mentally on a scale whose lower bound is represented by the så-fragment proposition. The speaker implicitly communicates her lack of commitment to the more highly ranked propositions on the scale. The principle behind the scalar ranking is argued to be highly context-dependent.

This paper describes a system for automatic sentence synthesis (or “generation”) from semantic representations. The system is implemented in Interlisp as an extension of D-PATR, Lauri Karttunen's environment for the development of unification-based grammars (see Karttunen 1986, Carlson & Linden 1987).

Some structural similarities between English and the Polynesian language Tokelau are investigated, especially regarding the multifunctionality of linguistic forms. Observations are made with respect to the relative distribution of overt processes and conversion, and it is argued that conversion should be regarded as a negatively defined cover notion for all cross-categorial lexical processes that do not involve formal modification of the input. The similarities with respect to the inventory and patterning of word-formational processes are motivated by certain similarities in the morphological type of the two languages.

This paper discusses Finnish depictive and resultative secondary predicates. The analysis is based on a condition of licensing which can be seen as a version of the principle of Full Interpretation: “A well-formed syntactic structure is licensed only if it can be linked to a well-formed conceptual structure.” The suggested non-trivial theory of the interface between syntax and semantics allows us to avoid unnecessary complexity in syntax, such as small clause and PRO, in secondary predicate adjuncts.

Through a critical exposition of the essential literature on the concept of “subject” in Danish it is demonstrated that the subject properties which are put forward there — and which are related to different levels of description: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics — are mutually incongruous. We argue that it is only possible to define the subject as a collection of features drawn from several levels. On the basis of the feature collection which we postulate the problem “subject as sentence constituent” is incorporated into the valency model, and in this connection a distinction is made between the abstract valency-conditioned entity and its realization in given sentence patterns. Sentence constituents are entities which can be defined only for sentence patterns.

For both of the two Danish construction han sidder og sover “he sits and sleeps” and han kom gående “he came walking (along)”, it has been suggested that the second verb is governed by the first in the same way as a main verb is governed by an auxiliary or modal verb. Specifically, this would imply that the second verb is located in the non-finite verb slot in the topological sentence pattern. It is shown that these suggestions are not justified and that the Danish verbal constructions only allow infinitives and past participles as verbal complements of another verb.

Representative sets of software systems for computational morphology are evaluated as candiates for a general morphological program module in the context of computer-aided word class tagging. They are considered as both programming tools and representations of linguistic Knowledge. The systems, which are found to be relatively neutral with respect to linguistic theory, can be grouped into a general-purpose and a special-purpose type. Pattern matching in them is described as a high-level feature applied to the computational treatment of phenomena characteristic of morphological analysis: lexical lookup, morphotactics, and morphophonemic alternation. The systems are found to perform similarly in simple applications, but significantly differently in more complicated ones where integrated and well-structured solutions are sought.

The prescriptive infinitive can be found in the North Germanic languages, is very old, and yet is largely unnoticed and undescribed. It is used in a very limited pragmatic context of a pleasant atmosphere by adults towards very young children, or towards pets or (more rarely) adults. It has a set of syntactic properties that distinguishes it from the imperative: Negation is pre-verbal, subjects are pre-verbal, subjects are third person and are only expressed by lexical DPs, not personal pronouns. It can be found in modern child language corpora, but probably originated before ad 500. The paper is largely descriptive, but some theoretical solutions to the puzzles of this construction are proposed.

In the present article, it is claimed that German, being basically an SOV-language, has a clearly delimitable extrapositional field behind the final verb field of the sentence, whereas Norwegian, which belongs to a VO-type, is in this respect more indeterminate. Two general facts corroborate this assumption. First, extraposition is in German systematically correlated with certain other syntactic phenomena that are either non-existent or play a far more peripheral part in Norwegian. Second, certain constructions of German that are uniformly extrapositional have a number of different translational equivalents in Norwegian which are only in part extrapositional in character. It is also claimed that these Norwegian constructions are formally more diverse, insofar as rules with a different structural impact are required to account for their syntactic behaviour.

This paper provides a comprehensive Optimality Theoretic formalization of a Finnish language game. In opposition to earlier rule-based studies, the present analysis motivates the sometimes arbitrary-looking patterns of the game and brings together various phenomena under a unified set of universal constraints. The paper also demonstrates the close relationship between language games and natural languages by showing how the patterns of the game are analysable with the help of constraints of ordinary languages, or constraints that deviate only minimally from the original ones. The analysis of the game offers valuable external evidence for the phonology of Finnish with respect to the internal structure of long segments, vowel harmony, syllable markedness and the integrity of diphthongs.

The present paper makes a case for retention of the (Revised) Alternation Condition in Lexical Phonology, a theory in which any single rule which presebts beytralizing, lexical effects restricted to derived forms along with allophonic, derivationally unterstricted dffects is cominally impossible. However, Korean obstruent palatalization does display both of these properties, whereby /t, th/ neutralize with /ĉ, ĉh/ before [i], but only if the [i] occurs in another morpheme (cf. /path + i/→ [paĉhi] ‘field-SUBJ’ vs. monomorphemic [pathi] ‘endure’), whereas / s / acquires the palatal allophone [∫[ before [i] both within ([∫i] ‘poem’) and between (/os + i/→ [o∫i] ‘cloth-SUBJ’) morphemes. The Revised Alternation Condition alone imposes just this restriction on a single palatalization rule functioning both lexically and post-lexically in Korean, which suggests that its removal from the theory is premature.

In this article, the traditional analysis of grammatical case in Finnish - in which the form of the object depends on the presence of an overt subject — is reworked within a formal syntactic framework. Within the Case competition model adopted here, the role of argument structure in case assignment, captured by Burzio's Generalization, plays a vital role in the underlying mechanisms of the case system: only when a verb governs two arguments, one of them Caseless, may it also license accusative case. This dependency is subsumed under universal syntactic relations, including government, binding and the ECP. It is also argued that Finnish incorporates active case subsystems within a main nominative-accusative system. These facts receive a natural account within the adopted framework.

Previous studies on the nature of paragrammatism in Finnish have established a continuum of syntactic complexity with normal speech at one end and Broca's aphasics at the other, while Wernicke's aphasics fall between these two groups. In the present analysis, two paragrammatic aphasics are described whose utterances are longer than normal and of a more complex syntactic structure than the utterances in the comparison data. The paragrammatic subjects also make plenty of morphological and syntactic errors. The comparison of the present results with earlier studies on paragrammatism in Finnish shows that paragrammatism is subject to considerable variation

It is well-known that wh-pronouns may pied-pipe their containing host phrases as they move to their final scope positions. In Finnish, such pied-piping requires further that a wh-element is situated at the left edge of host phrases, a position in which it ends up either through base generation or through wh-movement. This article investigates which independent properties define such pied-piping domains. An empirical generalization will be defended according to which a phrase constitutes such pied-piping domain if and only if it is adjoinable. The hypothesis that pied-piping domains are islands is put into question. Secondary wh-movement, pied-piping and adjunction are thus intrinsically linked with each other.

This article examines the interplay between certain depictions of sound and certain mimetic schemas (intersubjectively shared, body-based image schemas that concern basic processes and activities). The research contributes to the study of ideophones and also demonstrates that it is beneficial to study these types of words in written everyday interaction, as well as in spoken everyday interaction. Two Finnish sound words (ideophones, imitatives), naps ‘snap, pop’ and humps (the sound of relatively soft falling) are examined and their different meanings are analysed. Some research questions of this analysis are: What causes the sound described by either naps or humps? What kind of movement is described and to what mimetic schema is the sound linked? And also: What concrete, spatial processes might motivate the words’ more abstract uses? The examination indicates that naps and humps are used as concrete depictions of sounds and movements, but also more abstractly, as depictions of cognitive and emotional processes without any spatial movement or audible sound. The motivations for these more abstract uses are studied: It is argued that the basic uses of naps and humps are tied to certain bodily processes as their sounds or impressions, and that the more abstract uses of naps and humps reflect metaphorical mappings that map the mimetic schemas of these basic, bodily experiences to more abstract experiences. Grounds for this kind of use is the unique construal of imitatives: they present an imagistic, iconic depiction of a sensation and thus evoke imagery that is shared on a direct bodily level. Thus they aid in identifying with others and their experiences on a level that is directly accessible.

With respect to child English, Radford has claimed that there are no functional categories in early child syntax. This means that in English, children's grammer lacks both the C-projection and the I-projection. For Swedish, Platzack also hypothesizes that “there are no functional categories [like C or I] in early child syntax” (p. 107).

This article concentrates on the continual sequence of sound acquisition process in individual subjects. The basic material is taken from three longitudinal studies regarding three Latvian-learning (monolingual) children; additional observations were made of five other children. In spite of the fact that Latvian is rich in consonantal clusters, all children had difficulties in mastering them correctly: they tried to avoid them by omission of one or two consonants or by replacing them with other sounds. Even hypercorrect substitutions appeared. Medial clusters occurred much earlier than clusters in other positions, and final clusters several months before initial clusters. Similar observations in Czech children learning their mother-tongue point to some universal character of this phenomenon since consonantal clusters are absent in many world languages or are used in special positions, and they are among the first features which disappear in aphasia.

This paper reports work in progress. It concerns the relationship in Germanic languages between the sentence initial constituent XP, and the rest of the sentence S, assuming a rule S → XP S. An informal proposal is presented, according to which that relationship is better characterized in terms of the notion of unification than that of predication. The author is currently working with Elisabet Engdahl on producing a precise grammar of some long distance dependency constructions which should be able to embody the ideas sketched here.