Elucidates J. Warland's Predicative Theory'' to the effect that German has a unique predicative sentence structure which transforms ordinary semantic relationships, such as case usage. (RS)

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)

A study examines evidence concerning whether Amazonian languages have moved historically from earlier ergative-absolutive systems to nominative-accusative or mixed systems, or whether the change has been in the other direction. The main focus is on the Cariban language family. After a review of relevant literature, data from three of these…

The ergative construction is characteristic of all 37 languages of the Caucasian group. After definition of "subject" and "object," a summary is given of 13 Caucasian intransitive and transitive sentence-types, with respect to the case forms of their subjects and objects. The principal "symptoms" of ergativity are:…

Investigates principles for assigning case to the Noun Phrases (NP) in the Part-Whole Construction in Korean. It is shown that the case marking on the part-NP is a function of the case-assigning properties of the matrix verb, even when this is lexically governed. (41 references) (Author/LB)

Current linguistic theories, such as interpretive and generative semantics, are judged theoretically unsound and practically unsuitable for pedagogical purposes. Although the concept of case must be included in a grammar, current case theories are also rejected. The concept of case is redefined, as are the defining criteria for each case. A noun…

Presents a reworking of the rules of genitive singular inflection in German nouns, allowing the prediction of the distribution of "s" and "es" in a greater number of nouns than previously possible. (AM)

Applies general pragmatic principles to interpretations of noun phrase gaps. Argues that this approach reduces or eliminates the need for a grammatical explanation for anaphora, such as the one provided by Government and Binding theory. Examples are given from Guugu Yimidhirr, an Australian aboriginal language, and English. (Author/LMO)

This issue is devoted to language universals and consists of 4 papers. "Zulu Nominal Modification - An Outline," by A. Johnston, discusses modifiers in Zulu and their relation to nominals. "Shape Classifiers and Natural Categories," by S.G. Pulman, discusses the role of the dimension of "shape" in language…

Analysis of a form of Burushaski, spoken in northern Pakistan, uses Relational Grammar (RG), targeting grammatical relations at different strata in a clause, to account for a wide range of verb agreement and case marking phenomena. It is found that the RG notions of unaccusative and unergative are sufficient to characterize the two major groupings…

In many languages (e.g. Latin, Greek, Russian, Turkish, German) the relationship of a noun phrase to the rest of a sentence is indicated by altered forms of the noun. The possible relationships are called (surface) "cases." Because (1) it is difficult to specify semantic-free selection rules for the cases, and (2) related phenomena based on…

The paper constitutes an attempt to provide a nonenumerative characterization of agreeing terms and agreement features. The following pertinent statements turn out to be (near) exceptionless: only coreferential terms agree, and for any given language all agreement features are pronominal ones. Four agreement features, gender, number, definiteness,…

This paper presents evidence from Philippine languages which suggests a number of modifications in the theory of case grammar. Philippine languages and adjacent related languages mark the case relationship between the verb and one noun phrase in the sentence by a particle on the noun phrase and an affix on the verb, a phenomenon which in recent…

The discussion of case in grammar focuses on the ways relationships between words in sentences are marked. It describes the familiar systems of suffixes, from languages like Latin, and also the roles of prepositions, postpositions, and the use of the pronominal elements on verbs. One feature of case, the recurrence of apparently idiosyncratic…