En général, les modèles courants de l’antonymie lexicale ramènent le phénomène à l’action d’un opérateur de négation qui agit sur un ou plusieurs traits sémantiques d’une unité lexicale. En même temps, ces modèles prennent pour acquis qu’entre deux contraires, il ne peut exister ni une relation d’identité ni une relation d’inclusion logique. Ainsi, partir n’est nullement identique à rester, et en même temps, partir n’implique pas rester (et vice-versa). Or, il existe en français contemporain une classe de constructions, qui se caractérisent sur le plan formel par la présence d’une base nominale et de l’un ou l’autre des préfixes A-, ANTI-, CONTRE- ou NON-, qui semblent manifester et une occurrence de l’opérateur de négation et une relation d’inclusion logique entre la construction préfixée et la base nominale seule (dans le sens que, étant donné une base nominale y et un préfixe x, on peut affirmer de la construction x + y qu’elle représente un type particulier de y).

In Mandarin, there is an element de which has for years been the subject of analysis. Li and Thompson (1981) and Ross (1983 and 1984) have tried, with little success, to provide a unified treatment of this element. Li and Thompson (1981) claim that there are several de’s in Mandarin: a possessive marker, an adjectival marker and a nominalization marker. But the structural properties of these de’s and the similarities among them are ignored.

Using the Government and Binding framework (Chomsky 1981), I will provide an analysis which accounts for the structural and functional similarities and differences among the various de’s in Mandarin. First, I will state the theoretical assumptions relevant to the discussion of de. Second, I will present the non-controversial evidence showing that de is a head-final complementizer in relative clauses. Third, I will present further data exemplifying a head-final de in other constructions. Fourth, I will demonstrate the impossibility of having a head-final de complementizer in resultative clauses. Finally, I will propose that there are two de complementizers in Mandarin, one head-final, the other head-initial.

Cet article est essentiellement extrait (avec les adaptations nécessaires) du mémoire de maîtrise (Lagacé, 1984) déposé en juin 1984, mais non publié, mémoire qui analysait les relations concessives et les structures syntaxiques connexes afin d’établir une systématique à la fois sémantique et syntaxique permettant de définir ce champ linguistique et de créer des outils d’analyse et d’exploration.

The purpose of this paper is to present a complete syntactic analysis of the reflexives of English. Most of the work in this area, particularly work in the Government-Binding theory, has focused on one type of reflexive, what has come to be called the “anaphor” reflexive. Thus Koster (1984), in describing reflexives (among other things), postulates a number of essential properties characteristic of a core dependency relation between constituents. This relation, labelled “R”, is illustrated in (1). Its properties are listed in (2).

In a recent reply to my review of The Language Lottery, David Lightfoot (1985) attempts to rebut the claims which I made about the viability of language learning without task-specific innate principles. The basic thrust of Lightfoot’s book is that there are innate linguistic principles which constrain the form of grammars and play a crucial role in language acquisition. I referred to this view as “special nativism” and contrasted it with “general nativism”, the thesis that genetic structuring of the mind is of a more general sort and does not include principles or notions specific to language. I suggested that special nativism is linked to a particular syntactic theory (transformational grammar) and that a theory of language learning more compatible with general nativism could well emerge from a different type of syntactic analysis. As an illustration of this, I briefly outlined two counterproposals, one pertaining to the interpretation of the indefinite pronoun one and the other to binding theory. In his reply to my review, Lightfoot misinterprets my suggestions, pointing to supposed inadequacies which would undermine the more general point I advanced.

The non-linear analysis of Spanish phonology as proposed by Harris (1984) and others promises to augment the explanatory power of currently available phonological descriptions, and may offer significant insights into the description of phonological differences among dialects. However, the interaction between previously held notions of phonological processes and the new theoretical analysis has not yet been fully explored, and the claim that the latter apparatus must necessarily completely supplant the former is perhaps over ambitious. The present note will deal with competing analyses of two frequent processes in Spanish, velarization of underlying /n/ and aspiration of underlying /s/, both of which have been used in support of the latest theoretical proposals. I will attempt to demonstrate that the data used to formulate these proposals have been excessively idealized. The full range of complexity and variation which surrounds these and similar phenomena necessitates a more ramified analysis, and even an idealization which does not distort the fundamental nature of the two processes casts doubt on the simple analysis suggested as a replacement for orthodox generative and traditional structuralist analyses.

My starting point is the theory of CV phonology as developed by Clements and Keyser (1981, 1983) which, in turn, is one of a number of theories of syllable structure that have been proposed during the past decade to replace the earlier linear concept of generative phonology. These theories have in common that the syllable is recognized as a hierarchical unit in phonological representation and not just a concatenation of segments. Kahn (1976), whose dissertation on English first persuaded generative linguists of the need to depart from the linear model, proposed a tier of syllable nodes (here symbolized as $) linked directly to the segments — consonants and vowels — of the traditional analysis, as in the representation of the word Jennifer in (1) (taken from Clements and Keyser 1983:3).

Dans un article précédant (Surridge, 1985) nous avons examiné la relation entre le genre grammatical des composés en français et leur terminaison phonétique. Nous avons démontré que le genre grammatical des composés est attribué selon certaines règles relativement simples. Ces règles dépendent soit directement soit indirectement de la structure morpho-syntaxique du composé en conjonction, pour certains types de composés, avec des critères sémantiques étroitement liés à la structure du nom. La “micro-syntaxe” de la composition (nous empruntons le terme employé par Benveniste 1967:15) inclut une formule pour déterminer le genre grammatical des noms produits par ce mécanisme, formule qui est en large mesure indépendante de la terminaison phonétique du composé. Nous nous proposons maintenant d’examiner le rôle dans l’attribution du genre grammatical d’une autre “micro-syntaxe”, celle de la nominalisation suffixale, et d’un phénomène associé: la nominalisation par conversion grammaticale.

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I shall propose a unified account of the subject doubling construction and point out its similarities and differences with respect to object doubling — the so-called clitic doubling. The discussion is based on Trentino, a northern dialect of Italian, and Colloquial French. I will argue that it is not desirable to establish a connection between subject doubling and free inversion as is implicitly assumed in Safir (1982). Rather, it seems preferable to assume that the subject clitics are generated in the AGR element of INFL and that they are associated with pro in subject position. The possibility of subject doubling is then related to a parameter making reference to the optionality of Case absorbtion or spell-out by the clitic.