Children (aged five-to-six and nine-to-ten years) and adults rated the acceptability of well-formed sentences and argument-structure overgeneralization errors involving the prepositional-object and double-object dative constructions (e.g. "Marge pulled the box to Homer/*Marge pulled Homer the box"). In support of the entrenchment hypothesis, a…

Much recent work argues that lexical frequency plays a central explanatory role in linguistic theory, but the status, predicted effects, and methodological treatment of frequency are controversial, especially so in the less-investigated area of syntactic variation. This article addresses these issues in a case study of lexical frequency effects on…

In this article we offer up a particular linguistic phenomenon, quantifier-variable binding in Kannada ditransitives, as a proving ground upon which competing claims about learnability can be evaluated with respect to the relative abstractness of children's grammatical knowledge. We first identify one aspect of syntactic representation that…

We use the variationist method to elucidate the expression of future time in English, examining multiple grammaticalization in the same domain ("will" and "going to"). Usage patterns show that the choice of form is not determined by invariant semantic readings such as proximity, certainty, willingness, or intention. Rather, particular instances of…

We investigate the development of word order in German children's spontaneous production of complement clauses. From soon after their second birthday, young German children use both verb final complements with complementizers and verb-second complements without complementizers. By their third birthday they use both kinds of complement clauses with…

Discusses alternatives to a number of assumptions fundamental to established linguistic theory which lead to a coherent view of linguistic structure that treats grammar as a symbolic phenomenon and emphasizes importance of analyzability to grammatical structure. Outlines descriptive framework called Space Grammar and its approach to semantic…

Focuses on the Arabic verbal system, the prototypical example of templatic morphology, with the aim of deriving some of its distinctly special traits from basic principles. (Author/VWL)

The lexical semantic structures of change-of-state verbs are explored by linguistic theory, corpus analysis, and psycholinguistic experimentation. Data support the idea that these verbs can be divided into two classes, those for which change of state is internally caused and those for which it is externally caused. (Author/VWL)

Using data from Japanese, this article shows that the distinction between unergatives and unaccusatives is fully determined on the basis of the verb's inherent lexical meanings. (55 references) (Author/CK)

Shows that the German "perfekt" has a uniform temporal meaning that results systematically from the interaction of its three components--finiteness marking, auxiliary, and past participle--and that the two readings are the consequence of a structural ambiguity. This analysis also predicts the properties of other participle constructions, in…

Discusses the characterization of the meaning of the Russian perfective-imperfective opposition and concludes that these characterizations fail. The article maintains that aspects are temporal relations between the time at which some situation obtains and the time for which an assertion is made by the utterance that describes the situation. (33…

Presents evidence based on experimental data from Western European languages that there is orderly variation in the choice of perfective auxiliary with transitive verbs. Specifically, auxiliary selection is sensitive to a hierarchy of aspectual/thematic verb types: some verbs require a given auxiliary categorically; others allow both auxiliaries…

Introduces the theory that the conversational historical present (CHP) in itself has no significance. It is the switching between CHP and the past tenses that is the relevant feature. (Author/CFM)

An empirical study of word order correlations, based on a sample of 625 languages, determined exactly what pairs of elements correlate in order with the verb and object. An alternative to the Head-Dependent Theory is presented: the Branching Direction Theory, based on consistent ordering of phrasal and nonphrasal elements. (85 references)…

Argues for the description of thematic roles as two-cluster concepts called Proto-Agent and Proto-Patient, each characterized by a set of verbal entailments. It is asserted that an argument of a verb may bear on either or both proto-roles to varying degrees, according to the number and kind of entailments provided by the verb. (133 references) (JL)