This paper presents an analysis of the development and application of Charles Fillmore's case system (1968). The system is designed to determine semantic relationships (primarily of nouns) in linguistic deep structure. An historical overview of traditional grammar case labels and reviews of several other case systems are included. The appendix…

Argues that the i-within-i condition (Chomsky, 1981) is both empirically inadequate and theoretically incoherent. A definition for circular chains, a condition on the interpretation of the reference of free pronominals and anaphors, is proposed that adequately accounts for the data involving referential circularity that had been previously…

Presents a study of young children's understanding that pronouns and proper names cannot be modified by pronominal adjectives. Some nonsyntactic theories are discussed that support the claim that children understand knowledge of word order through the rules that order abstract linguistic categories. (31 references) (GLR)

Presents a preliminary study of the use of the Spanish preposition "a" with inanimate direct object nouns (DOs). The properties of such constructions at the lexical, sentence, and discourse levels are described, and the general principles that condition the preposition's appearance are discussed. (21 references) (GLR)

Proposals for foot structure in Japanese have been limited to versification and to mechanisms for assigning tone that bear little resemblance to stress feet. It is argued that a bimoraic foot whose properties are similar to those of stress feet in other languages plays a significant role in Japanese morphophonology. (35 references) (JL)

Demonstrates how the important distinction between the locative and nonlocative implication of a noun is essential for the presence of the Chinese locative particle "li," identifying groups of nouns that can not take the particle, nouns that optionally use the particle, and nouns that must use the particle. (CB)

The advantages of analyzing the Yoruba prefix "oni-" as two morphemes, "o-" and "ni-" are discussed, and it is shown why it is better to analyze it as an inseparable, single morpheme rather than two separate morphemes. "Oni-" is the only class-maintaining prefix in Yoruba, and is the only prefix attached to a noun to form another noun. Evidence is…

Discusses the automatic construction of abstracts from the texts of documents. Automatic sentence extraction is examined, including syntactic criteria and semantic relational criteria; textual cohesion is discussed, including the recognition of anaphors and noun phrases; text structure is addressed; and the concept of abstract-frames is described.…

Describes a computer-based connectionist-type network model that correctly identified the gender of a set of French nouns, relying solely on information inherent in the nouns' structures, in the absence of explicit rules for evaluating nouns, through discovering criterial gender-specific features through examples of masculine and feminine nouns.…

The nature of case-coding strategies for relative clause formation is explained, focusing on why languages use such strategies and the forms such strategies can take. Language-specific illustration in Modern Welsh is provided to support proposed redefinitions of hierarchy and case-coding strategies. (22 references) (Author/CB)

Comparison of the 1970 and 1984 editions of a Spanish dictionary regarding the accommodation of female counterparts of traditionally male occupations found such adjustments as use of the feminine article "la" and the suffixes "-a" and "-nta." Other nouns proved to be particularly resistant to such accommodation. (CB)

Although the nature of topicalization is complex and cannot be easily separated from considerations of syntactic structure and sentence focus, analysis of language usage has indicated that topicalization is more a stylistic than a syntactic process. Topicalization refers to moving a noun phrase (NP) into the initial position of a sentence.…

A review of literature and research of some linguistic theories illustrates how gender neutralization in absolute numbers in Hebrew and Lebanese Arabic can more appropriately be accounted for by the rhythmic characteristics of the numeral set as recited in sequence. (CB)

This article reports that, after years of debate, representatives of German-speaking countries meeting in Vienna reached an agreement on measures to reform the spelling of the German language. Many linguists were disappointed that it was not decided to change the most unique characteristic of German spelling--the capitalization of German nouns.…

Analyzes the case marking structure of Japanese. It is proposed that the Case particle has its projection, the Kase Phrase, and that its head, Kase, receives case and a thematic role from an external source, and assigns them to the noun phrase.(36 references) (JL)