The case-number suffixes of the Western Nilotic language Nuer (Frank 1999) display a remarkable combination of formal simplicity and distributional complexity, which is manifested in: (i) a seemingly erratic form-function mapping that precludes attributing a consistent meaning to the suffixes, and (ii) a wealth of inflection classes only barely differentiated from each other. The suffixes looks as if they were rule-generated, but behave as if they were memorized. I advance a model of inflection combining principal parts, implicational rules, and default inheritance, in which the bulk of the complexity is attributed to the lexical stem, revealing the underlying systematicity behind suffix assignment.

This article reexamines a controversial construction in Acehnese (Lawler 1977 versus Durie 1988). I demonstrate that the construction is a passive, even though a verbal prefix bears the features of the agent rather than the surface subject. I analyze the prefix as a morphological realization of the functional head that introduces the external argument; the features borne by this head are not agreement, but rather interpretable features that restrict the external argument position. Important consequences are that Acehnese does not counterexemplify the universality of grammatical relations (contra Durie 1988 and subsequent), and that Acehnese provides clear morphological evidence for the presence in passives of the functional head that introduces the external argument.

Much recent work argues that lexical frequency plays a central explanatory role in linguistic theory, but the status, predicted effects, and methodological treatment of frequency are controversial, especially so in the less-investigated area of syntactic variation. This article addresses these issues in a case study of lexical frequency effects on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression in Spanish. Prior studies of Spanish SPP use revealed significant constraints including formal and semantic properties of the verb, and discourse factors such as a switch reference. These constraints appear to be confirmed in our analysis of 4,916 verbs from a spoken corpus of Spanish, as is a powerful role for lexical frequency. But the frequency effect—best configured as a discrete rather than continuous variable—is complex; statistically, it has no independent direct effect, but operates entirely through interaction with other constraints. All other constraints on SPP use are amplified in high-frequency forms, and some disappear at low frequencies. Frequency thus acts as a ‘gatekeeper’ and potentiator: above some frequency threshold, significant linguistic constraints on SPP use emerge; below the threshold they do not. We propose that this reflects experience and acquisition: speakers cannot formulate hypotheses about individual lexical items until they have sufficient evidence; the threshold is the level at which speakers have enough experience with a form to do so.

These results have important theoretical and methodological implications. They require rich lexical representations incorporating frequency and collocational information. Methodologically they indicate the need for careful quantitative explorations of frequency, because its role as an enabler of other constraints produces unstable statistical results.

While all of the Scandinavian languages have verb-second order in main clauses, they vary in the word order in subordinate clauses: in Icelandic the finite verb appears in a high position, to the left of negation and sentence-medial adverbs, while in all of the standard Mainland Scandinavian languages it remains in a low position, to the right of these elements. This order in Mainland Scandinavian is known to be the result of a historical change, and has frequently been tied to the loss of agreement morphology. Faroese has been argued to be currently undergoing a change of the same type, but it has proved difficult to establish a sound empirical footing for the various claims about the syntax of this language. In this article we present data from three experimental investigations of acceptability, supplemented with a study of available texts, that show that the language is very close to completing the change in the loss of the high position for the verb, but that its syntax is still distinct in this respect from that of Danish, the mainland Scandinavian language with which it is in most contact. In addition to establishing a firmer empirical basis for theories of verb movement, our study also makes the methodological point that grammaticality-judgment tasks can yield extremely fine-grained results even in cases where variability is at issue.

Actualization is traditionally seen as the process following syntactic reanalysis whereby an item’s new syntactic status manifests itself in new syntactic behavior. The process is gradual in that some new uses of the reanalyzed item appear earlier or more readily than others. This article accounts for the order in which new uses appear during actualization. Five corpus-based case studies are presented involving reanalysis and actualization in different functional domains of grammar. These include the reanalysis of all but, far from, and Dutch verre van to adverbial downtoners, and the reanalysis of fan and key from nouns to adjectives. It is shown that actualization proceeds from one environment to another on the basis of similarity relations between environments. The similarity relations may involve broad syntactic generalizations but also superficial similarities to existing patterns, including even an item’s uses prior to reanalysis. Because actualization is guided by local and global analogies to existing uses, one determinant of the course of actualization is the locus of reanalysis, as it defines the first uses of an item under change, on which subsequent uses can be modeled. It also follows that the course of actualization is both item-specific and language-specific. The findings presented challenge the concept of reanalysis, which appears less abrupt than usually assumed. Further, it is argued that the findings fit best with usage-based models of language, which attribute a prominent role to similarity-based organization in grammar, and in which an item’s use can be subject to multiple, potentially conflicting generalizations.