This paper presents patterns of adjacency in performance data and in cross-linguistic grammatical conventions. It is argued that a common principle of processing efficiency explains both: the more syntactic and semantic relations whose processing domains are minimized, and the greater the minimization preference in the processing of each relation, the more adjacency we find. The preferences of performance are quite systematic and it is suggested that they are ultimately motivated by reductions in simultaneous processing demands in working memory. The correlations with patterns of grammatical variation exist because grammars have conventionalized the adjacency preferences of performance.

This paper investigates the semantics of be going to, starting from a schematic definition which interprets temporal meanings in terms of referential and epistemological attributes. The analysis is framed within the model of cognitive grammar, taking deictic syntactical constructions as instances of grounding predications and differences between them as triggered by aspects of construal and profiling. On the basis of corpus material from American and British English texts, it is concluded that be going to features a paradoxical but pragmatically plausible interpretation of the future as non-given yet present, with a pending event's being signaled or announced at the time of speaking.

Two Romanian nominalizations, the infinitive and the supine, are compared in Noun+Object (NO) and Noun+Subject (NS) structures, regarding their ability to yield e-(vent)/r-(esult) readings. The NO structures behave alike and yield e-readings. The two NS structures contrast sharply: the infinitive NS is always an r-nominal, the supine NS may be an e-nominal. This contrast between the infinitive and the supine follows from their aspectual properties. While the supine is [−Telic], and may project either an Object or a Subject in e-nominals, the infinitive is [+Telic], and REQUIRES the projection of the Object. This constraint may follow from the fact that in nominals Aspect and Case are checked in the same projection.

Two classic and previously unrelated problems are reconsidered for their implications for optimality theory and acquisition. The puzzle-puddle-pickle problem centers on the debate over children’s underlying representations and the characterization of interacting error patterns which, when lost, result in overgeneralizations. In response to the challenges that this problem poses, an optimality theoretic solution is offered that appeals to the second problem, the Duke-of-York gambit, which involves co-occurring generalizations with reverse effects. The solution avoids language-specific restrictions on input representations and characterizes the loss and introduction of errors by one mechanism. New insight is offered for when overgeneralization is (not) expected to occur.

This article explores the interface between the syntactic and semantic representation of natural language with respect to the interpretation of time. The main claim of the paper is that the semantic relationship of temporal dependency requires syntactic locality at LF. Based on this claim, I explore the syntax and semantics of gerundive relative clauses. I argue that since gerundive relatives are temporally dependent on the tense of the main clause, they need to be local with a temporal element of the main clause at LF. I show that gerundive relatives receive different temporal interpretations depending on their syntactic position at LF. This analysis sheds light on the behavior of gerundive relatives in constructions involving coordination, existential there, scope of quantificational and cardinality adverbials, extraposition, presuppositionality effects and binding-theoretic reconstruction effects.

This study examines the notion of syntactic position as it is manifested in German. Transformational approaches standardly rely on configurational notions such as specifier or head for positional effects. A closer investigation of German subordinate structures finds the standard positional dichotomy between heads and specifiers wanting. At the same time, the distributional facts strongly argue for an explicit recognition of the notion of syntactic position, albeit one that is not based on tree-configurational notions, but instead in terms of linearly defined classes of distribution among constituents within the clause. Finally it is argued that this approach provides the basis for characterizing clause types which naturally generalizes over different immediate dominance relations.

It has been widely assumed that the preverbal particles of Irish are complementizers. Given the distribution of the particle aL, this assumption provides support for two central claims about WH-movement – that its application is successive-cyclic, and that it is driven by a morphosyntactic feature of the complementizer. However, the claim that aL is a complementizer also has been widely challenged. This paper aims to (re)confirm the original analysis. It argues that the sceptical literature (i) underestimates the morphosyntactic heterogeneity of Irish complementizers, and (ii) restricts attention to an overly narrow subset of constructions in which aL appears.

In this paper, I consider the semantics of a modifier infinitive in English, related to the more widely discussed Rationale Clause (see especially Faraci 1974, Jones 1991). I argue that the semantics of this infinitive (a Telic Clause) derives from the properties of the predicate which heads it (TELOS). I characterize TELOS, within a Davidsonian event semantics, as a pure relation between events and argue against the view that the word only, which often prefaces the Telic Clause, is in fact the head of the construction. I explore the conditions on reference which apply to TELOS. As well as offering an account of a little-discussed construction, therefore, this paper is intended as a contribution to our understanding of the place of argument structure in event semantics.

The present article discusses the notion of variation in discourse as an essential characteristic of language and the linguistic parameters that can be used for its study. The article describes the different traditions in the study of variation and places special emphasis on the role of prosodic analysis in the study of spoken discourse. The study explores the use of discourse markers in the London-Lund Corpus and describes their linguistic variation by introducing the notion of APPROPRIATENESS. This notion, which combines the quantitative and qualitative presence of elements in discourse, is based on a mathematical index that can describe discourse variation with a sound systematic criterion.

Cahill & Gazdar (henceforth C&G) have presented their analysis of German noun inflection in issue 35.1 (1999) of this journal. As they emphasize (on page 4), the lexical knowledge representation language DATR they employ is theoretically neutral and can serve to encode descriptions set in entirely diverse theoretical frameworks, not just those that are theoretically close to theirs. The formalism is just as amenable to ‘item and process’ and ‘word and paradigm’ analyses as it is to the affixal ‘item and arrangement’ perspective. Moreover, distinct DATR theories (i.e., concrete descriptions) may differ greatly in their input (queries) and output (returned values) while they share a common structure reflecting the inheritance relations arising from the described phenomena.

In this paper I will present another analysis of German noun inflection, encoded in the same formalism but based on the theory of MINIMALIST MORPHOLOGY developed by Wunderlich and his associates (Wunderlich & Fabri 1995, Wunderlich 1997a, 1999b). In his account German nouns are mapped into tree-based representations of their inflectional paradigms, whereas C&G map tuples of lexemes and inflectional categories (case and number) into individual inflected word forms. The major linguistic gain of my analysis is that the principal strength of Wunderlich's account, the formal description of relations within paradigms, is combined with the formal description of hierarchical relations BETWEEN paradigms, which is central for C&G but given little attention by Wunderlich.

Modern functionalist approaches to syntax were pioneered in the 1920s by the scholars associated with the Linguistic Circle of Prague and Prague-based functionalism is a dynamic force today. Nevertheless, citations of this work by North American functionalists are few and far between. This paper sets out to explain that state of affairs. It pinpoints the profound theoretical differences between mainstream North American and Czech approaches that have led to partisans of the former losing interest in the latter. The paper argues that, on the other hand, Praguian functional syntax has a great deal in common with more ‘formal’ functionalist approaches and with much work in formal semantics. Not surprisingly, then, recent years have seen increasing productive collaboration between North American and Western European practitioners of these approaches and members of the Prague School.

The present paper shows that Right-Dislocation (RD) in Japanese shares a number of characteristics with scrambling, but nonetheless cannot be identified as rightward scrambling. The proposed solution to this apparent contradiction is that there is no direct syntactic movement of the right-dislocated phrase. Rather, the right-dislocated phrase is a remnant of an extra clause which is deleted (or sluiced) after scrambling. It is therefore concluded that RD involves leftward movement (scrambling) and that its rightward effect is only apparent. The proposed analysis is supported by a number of facts that have not previously been reported, including the distribution of adverbs, pronominal coreference, anaphor binding, idiom interpretations and wh-questions. The proposed analysis is also consistent with Kayne’s (1994) proposal that there are no rightward movement processes in syntax.

Farrell Ackerman & Gert Webelhuth,A theory of predicates (CSLI Lecture Notes 76). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 1998. Pp. xiv+402.

Diana Archangeli & D. Terence Langendoen (eds.),Optimality Theory: an overview. Malden & Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. Pp. xii + 233.

Donald Loritz, How the brain evolved language. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 227.

Lyle Jenkins, Biolinguistics : exploring the biology of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii+264.

In the course of reviewing recent books on the evolution of language and communication (Dunbar 1996, Hauser 1996, Deacon 1997) I have had occasion to note that relatively few writers on these topics know much about linguistics, and to wish that more of them did. I should have remembered the old adage that one shouldn't wish for things - one might get them.

For more than a century, linguists honored the Linguistic Society of Paris's ban on all discussion of language evolution; other disciplines went ahead with it regardless. Now that the centrality of language evolution to any study of our species is becoming apparent, linguists are desperately trying to play catchup, and the two volumes reviewed here both appeared in the last couple of years. Both authors are linguists, albeit hyphenated ones. Donald Loritz teaches computational linguistics at Georgetown University; his doctorate was in psycholinguistics. Lyle Jenkins works in the Biolinguistics Institute in Cambridge, MA; however, his doctorate was in unhyphenated linguistics. It would be difficult to find two authors whose ideas were more diametrically opposed.

Peter W. Culicover, Syntactic nuts: hard cases, syntactic theory, and language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. viii + 244.

Paul M. Postal,Three investigations of extraction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Pp. x+215.