Investigates the distribution of existential polarity wh-phrases (EPWs) in Chinese that behave like negative polarity items, examining the distribution of Chinese EPWs and arguing that using EPWs is felicitous if the local propositions in which they appear do not entail existence of a referent satisfying the EPW description. The paper considers…

This study reports on functional morpheme (I, D, and C) production in the spontaneous speech of five pairs of children who have undergone hemispherectomy, matching each pair for etiology and age at symptom onset, surgery, and testing. Our results show that following left hemispherectomy (LH), children evidence a greater error rate in the use of…

Traditional syntactic accounts of verb phrase ellipsis (e.g., ''Jason laughed. Sam did [ ] too.'') categorize as ungrammatical many sentences that language users find acceptable (they ''undergenerate''); semantic accounts overgenerate. We propose that a processing theory, together with a syntactic account, does a better job of describing and…

This paper presents a class of sentences that certain syntactic rules of English would be expected to produce, but that are not grammatical. The sentences all involve the raising of a sentential Noun Phrase (NP) and the subsequent application of some syntactic rule to that senential NP. A constraint, referred to as the Antigone Constraint, is…

In Spanish, there is a very common type of sentence that has the following properties: (1) one of the arguments of the verb is a noun phrase that consists of an article and a noun; (2) there is also a dative pronoun dependent on the verb; and (3) the dative pronoun is understood as the possessor of the definite noun. It has been suggested that…

Argues that English intonational structure and surface syntactic structure are one and can be captured in a single unified grammar. The interpretations that the grammar provides for such constituents corresponds to the entities and open propositions of intonational meaning that have been described as "theme" and "rheme,""given" and "new," and…

Accounts for the observation that in a broad range of genetically unrelated languages two classes of direct objects are found that are based on their semantic and syntactic properties. Specifically, splits are found in case marking, object position, and the ability of the object to trigger verb agreement. Proposes that this split in object…

This paper explores the intra-clausal relations of minimal locutionary and illocutionary force in Southeastern Tepehuan. It surveys the semantic and syntactic sentence types with primary reference to grammatical relations. The semantic propositional structures, along with their modal parameters and other semantic prosodies are discussed in Section…

This study is based on the assumption that texts are composed of two kinds of propositions: lexical and relational. Lexical propositions account for semantic relations within a clause, and they can be described as semantic role relations between a lexical predicate and its arguments. Relational propositions account for functional relations among…

A discussion of verb intransitivization in English grammar looks at different verb classes that allow or do not allow this phenomenon. The semantic primitive of involvement is a phenomenon that attempts to find related features in sentences where intransitivization occurs. Semantic involvement patterns are assigned in the subject or direct object…

This paper examines the basic properties of subject and object in Arabic and characterizes them through their grammatical manifestation in a relational network. The study also investigates the relational properties of subject and object with respect to other grammatical notions such as relativization, reflexivization, and passivization. Data for…

The axiomatic functionalist approach to linguistic analysis, in which, by definition, syntactic relationships are asymmetrical and morphological relationships are symmetrical, provides the framework for a discussion of the grammatical identity of the definite article "al" in Arabic as either morphemic or syntactic. Criteria for the…

Discusses the relationship between the pragmatic and the syntactic aspects of a message or, more specifically, the relationship between the status of the information in the message (that is, whether the information is shared or not shared by speaker and listener) and the grammatical structures used to reproduce the message. (CFM)

Discusses future-tense form possibilities in English and their pedagogical implications. Six possibilities are discussed: (1) the future tense proper, signalled by "if" + present or mental state verbs; (2) declaration of intent, with "I'll" or "we'll"; (3) "Shall I/we" questions; (4) "will you"…

The semantics and syntax of English comparative structures ("as...as") are re-examined. It is argued that traditional reference grammars have misrepresented comparisons as expressing a notion of equality, and an alternative analysis of the semantic relation between "-er than" and "as...as" is proposed. (Author/MSE)