Explains the Greenbergian universals of modifier and adposition ordering as accidental side effects of diachronic derivation. An argument is made that disparate diachronic processes can conspire to give the effect of synchronic universals. For example, the ordering of modifiers may result from their generation by means of binding anaphor strategy.…

In an attempt to establish the differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese usage of the inflected infinitive, Brazilian speakers were asked to give their judgments on well-formed infinitival clauses in European Portuguese. (35 references) (JL)

Describes an information-retrieval schema that takes into account linguistic variation based on phrases. Introduces the phrase-retrieval hypothesis to replace the keyword-retrieval hypothesis, and discusses natural-language processing systems; syntactical, morphological, and lexico-semantical normalization; and future work. (Author/LRW)

Critiques past approaches to identifying phrasal verbs and proposes an alternative approach. Instead of requiring verb + particle combinations to demonstrate specific features to be identified as phrasal verbs, the new approach calls for researchers and teachers to consider all verb + particle combinations to be potential phrasal verbs until they…

Analyzes the negative utterances made by German-speaking children in transcripts of spontaneous speech. Results indicate that German-speaking children distinguish between "nicht" and "nein," using "nicht" in sentence-medial position for sentential negation and "nein" in sentence-initial position for anaphoric negation. (Author/VWL)

Variationist account of how direct quotations are framed in spoken Spanish requires definition of variable and envelope of variation followed by investigation of linguistic, stylistic, and social constraints. Variable is defined as set of three strategies for directly quoting speech, gestures, and sound effects of people, animals, or things in…

Looks at resultative constructions in Korean and English and shows that their basic features follow from general properties of prediction and argument saturation. The analysis is formulated in the framework of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG). (Author/VWL)

Examines NP-type nouns, nominals that alternate between count noun and noun phrase constructions with resulting changes in their semantic interpretation. (Author/VWL)

When accounting for the usage of some linguistic form, one can refer to its discourse profile, all concomitant features frequently co-occurring with that form in discourse, or abstract a more general claim about its discourse function, referring only to the necessary and sufficient conditions for the proper occurrence of the form. This article…

Examines why some sayings and catchphrases stick in people's minds, while others are unrecognized and unused. Offers an answer to this question from an evolutionary standpoint. (Author/VWL)

This paper aims to contribute to elucidating the notion of congruence in code-switching with particular reference to Welsh-English data. It has been suggested that a sufficient degree of congruence or equivalence between the constituents of one language and another is necessary in order for code-switching to take place. We shall distinguish…

This research proposes a new theory of direct causation and examines how this concept plays a key role in the linguistic coding and individuation of causal events. According to the "no-intervening-cause hypothesis," a causal chain can be described by a single-clause sentence and construed as a single event if there are no intervening causers…

We find a general, language-independent pattern in child language acquisition in which there is a clear difference between subject and object noun phrases. On one hand, indefinite objects tend to be interpreted nonreferentially, independently of word order and across experiments and languages. On the other hand, indefinite subjects tend to be…

The interactions among demonstrative adjectives in certain genitive phrases and WH-words in Japanese are investigated in this report on a work in progress. It is argued that certain demonstrative adjectives in Japanese, such as "ano" ("that"), occupy the highest Spec position in DP and that they block A-bar movement out of DP; genitive phrases,…

A survey of the history of linguistic theory concerning grammar in the United States traces the development of theory since 1910. It begins with a general historical review of American linguistics. The subsequent three chapters focus on grammar. The first of these deals with morphology, beginning with Leonard Bloomfield's ideas in both his early…