Linguistic expressions involving body parts (and other entities) belonging to an "interested person" often have unique grammatical properties, e.g., the dative case in Russian. The notion called Inalienable Possession (IP) is used to account for such properties. Semantic and pragmatic analyses account for some of the properties of IP in Russian.…

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)

Third in a series of tongue-in-cheek articles on the use of Greek and Latin words for names of U.S. cities. (DS)

Fourth and final part in a series of tongue-in-cheek articles on the use of Greek and Latin words for names of U. S. cities. (DS)

Second in a series of tongue-in-cheek articles on the use of Greek and Latin words for names of U.S. cities. (DS)

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:…

Work supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institutes of Mental Health. (RS)

Research supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Educational Testing Service; examines the psychological validity of Fillmore's theory of case grammar. (DD)

Discusses ergative case marking system in Anatolian branch of Indo-European in which neuters inflect ergatively and common-gender nouns inflect accusatively. Development from instrumental to ergative that occurred in prehistory of Gorokan languages of Papua New Guinea is also discussed. It is suggested that this process is a general mechanism for…

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…

Traces the historical changes of the verb "like" and shows how the verb's role in Modern English has a greater influence in syntax as opposed to semantics. This change in the verb's function has led to the formation of a new lexical subcategorization frame, or redefinition of the verb. (TR)

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 second volume of a three-part language research report presents a sketch of Hungarian syntax with emphasis on several particular aspects of grammar. The first section considers the noun phrase and covers such issues as internal word order, number, demonstratives, cases and postpositions, genitive constructions, pronominal forms of cases and…