While affix ordering often reflects general syntactic or semantic principles, it can also be arbitrary or variable. This article develops a theory of morpheme ordering based on local morphotactic restrictions encoded as weighted bigram constraints. I examine the formal properties of morphotactic systems, including arbitrariness, nontransitivity,…

What is the mechanism by which a linguistic change advances across successive generations of speakers? We explore this question by using the model of incrementation provided in Labov 2001 and analyzing six current changes in English. Extending Labov's focus on recent and vigorous phonological changes, we target ongoing morphosyntactic(-semantic)…

Provides evidence from child language acquisition and comparative syntax for existence of a syntactic parameter in the classical sense of Chomsky (1981), with simultaneous effects on syntactic argument structure. Implications are that syntax is subject to points of substantive parametric variation as envisioned in Chomsky, and the time course of…

Although both Chinese and Japanese allow resultative compounds of the form V/cause-V/result, Japanese resultative compounds do not show the semantic ambiguities seen in Chinese compounds. An argument that three factors explain this difference supports the claim that many differences among languages can be accounted for with universal principles…

The rate of assimilation of individual features to their target phonetic constraints varies as a function of the general target constraint itself, the segment class affected by the constraint, and the syllable involved. This rate is hypothesized as a measure of the strength or productivity of the phonological rule. (Author/DB)

Examines crosslinguistic variation in "filler-gap dependencies" (wh-questions and relative clauses) from a processing perspective, and integrates research findings from psycholinguistics, language typology, and generative grammar. Numerous implicational universals and hierarchies are proposed that receive a natural explanation in terms…

Computer-based multidimensional scaling techniques are used to determine the dimensionality of grammatical variation in three large sets of data: Ross' (1973) Noun Phrase and fake Noun Phrase data; Sankoff's (1974) complementizer "que"-deletion (Montreal French) data; and Cedergren's (1973) syllable-final S-reduction (Panamanian Spanish) data. (DB)

Examines the phenomenon of semantic change with regard to color categories in closely related Mayan languages (Tzetal and Tzotzil) associated with radically different social milieux. It is argued that, although a model of individual cognition explains how color categories change at the basic level, a social model accounts for differences between…

Clark's 1987 Principle of Contrast seems inconsistent with the synonymy exhibited by inflectional affixes in languages with inflection classes. But if inflection class membership identifies the inflection class of the lexemes to which it attaches, then inflection affixation complies with this principle. Grammatical implications are suggested. (76…