Linguistic phonetic aspects of languages can be described in terms of about 17 articulatory parameters, and/or a similar number of acoustic parameters. Descriptions of phonological patterns in languages involve features that are not in a one-to-one relationship with these phonetic parameters, and that cannot account for some linguistic phonetic differences among languages. Speakers and listeners producing and interpreting linguistic events probably use something like the proposed phonetic parameters. There is no necessity for most phonological features to be part of mental representations.

This paper critically examines Chomsky's position on meaning, considering its development over the years, its significance for other areas of grammatical theory and for related areas outside linguistics, and its methodological, empirical, and philosophical bases. Focus is on the points of disagreement between Chomsky's position and the author's, and it is argued that a close examination of the bases for Chomsky's position shows that it should be rejected.

This paper examines the process by which subject properties are acquired by noun phrases not previously having those properties. The evidence presented indicates that behavioral subject properties (like the ability of an NP to delete under EQUI) are acquired historically prior to subject coding properties (like nominative case-marking and control of verb agreement).

Transitivity involves a number of components, only one of which is the presence of an object of the verb. These components are all concerned with the effectiveness with which an action takes place, e.g., the punctuality and telicity of the verb, the conscious activity of the agent, and the referentiality and degree of affectedness of the object. These components co-vary with one another in language after language, which suggests that Transitivity is a central property of language use. The grammatical and semantic prominence of Transitivity is shown to derive from its characteristic discourse function: high Transitivity is correlated with foregrounding, and low Transitivity with backgrounding.

The range of interpretations of new zero-derived denominal verbs in English is accounted for here without resorting to the novel theoretical devices proposed by Clark & Clark 1979. In addition, a method of treating the semantics of morphologically derived words is exemplified, wherein a sparse semantics combines with general principles of conversation to provide interpretations for such words in context.

In Greenlandic Eskimo, a polysynthetic language, the word-building apparatus performs much of the work that is accomplished by the syntax of more familiar languages. In particular, numerous processes in this language create verbs from nouns. Evidence of a quite unusual sort shows that these noun-incorporation processes must follow certain ordinary syntactic rules, such as case assignment and modifier-noun agreement. The language thus falsifies pronouncements concerning the independence of syntax and word formation based on data from languages that are typologically very different from Greenlandic

Supposed evidence for acoustic assimilations attributable to the feature [grave], presented in Hyman 1973 and Vago 1976, is shown to be evidence merely of deficient modeling of articulation in the SPE articulatory-feature system—rather than, as Hyman and Vago assume, proof for the acoustic basis of the processes they cite. Straightforward articulatory explanations are available for all the evidence adduced, but they are not expressible in the SPE framework. The necessary refinements of such a system of articulatory description are shown to require more than adjustments of the feature inventory.

Passive sentences often have different meanings and communicative intent from the corresponding active sentences. It is proposed that the ‘extra’ attitudinal and modal meanings of passive sentences are derived by Gricean conversational implicature. It is therefore possible to state the relation between active and passive sentences in syntactic terms without reference to meaning. Implicatures are more likely to be associated with passive sentences if the construction is ‘marked’, as measured by the restrictions placed on which NP's may be promoted to subject position, and what other roles the derived subject may have. Conversationally conveyed meanings are based on what appears as topic in subject position.

A cross-generational study of speech in Havasupai, a Yuman language of Arizona, reveals a set of variable phonological rules, affecting person-agreement affixes, that have begun to operate in the last hundred years. These rules might seem obligatory for younger speakers; but closer investigation reveals that these speakers have instead re-analysed the paradigm. This re-analysis illustrates the principle that rules which do not allow surface evidence of the underlying form to be preserved cannot exist: obligatory application of such a rule must eliminate both the rule itself and the underlying form. The speech of the youngest children shows continuing change of the paradigm toward an internally-consistent, transparent system of person-agreement that differs radically from the original system.

Although linguistic signs in isolation are symbolic, the system or grammar which relates them may be diagrammatically iconic in two ways: (a) by isomorphism, a bi-unique correspondence tends to be established between signans and signatum; (b) by motivation, the structure of language directly reflects some aspect of the structure of reality. Isomorphism is so nearly universal that deviations from it require explanation. Motivation, although widespread, establishes a typology of languages, as indicated in Saussure's Cours. The evidence of artificial taboo languages suggests that degree of motivation co-varies inversely with the number of ‘prima onomata’ in the lexicon.

The present study re-examines the data of contemporary Russian conjugation in the framework of a semiotic concept of linguistic structure based on markedness as the informing principle. Emphasis is placed on demonstrating the coherence of expression and content that allows grammatical facts to subsist as such. This is achieved by analysing in detail how the relational values of the pertinent grammatical categories are represented diagrammatically in their phonological and morphophonemic expression. Setting explication of grammar as its goal, rather than description or predictability, the analysis articulates a radically different and explicitly hermeneutic perspective for linguistic inquiry.

Modern Hebrew is examined as an instance of an (S)VO language—in that, like Russian (but unlike English or French), it has a wide range of sentence-types lacking an overt grammatical subject. These include (a) the semantically and structurally related classes of existential and possessive sentences; (b) impersonal sentences with 3pl. verbs which may function in place of agentless passives; (c) dative-marked experiential sentences with predicates such as ‘cold’ or ‘sad’; and (d) environmental comments about time, weather etc. Typological correlates of a language's tolerance for subjectless constructions are then suggested: thus Hebrew, while basically SVO, makes wide use of verb-initial constructions; the language is not ‘subject-dominant’, either structurally or pragmatically; and it tolerates numerous fronting operations. It is concluded that the class of constructions which may be subjectless across languages is not random, but predictable along the lines suggested for Hebrew.

This study shows that, in contexts of optional application, reflexivization in Russian is governed by a class of secondary reference conditions: person, referentiality, set reference, and collectivity. The evidence presented goes against the prevailing assumption that coreference is the sole reference condition on reflexivization.

A crucial problem facing historical linguists is how to account for the direction of certain changes. The direction of change taken by two constructions, Object Raising and Object Deletion, between Medieval and Modern Greek, is documented here, and is shown to be explainable by reference to substantive universal constraints holding on the form these constructions can take in natural language, as evidenced by data from a variety of languages. We conclude that universals guided the direction of these Greek syntactic changes, and in general can rule out certain conceivable changes as impossible. Universals thus lead to a more restrictive, and hence stronger, theory of syntactic change.

Automatic alternations, those traditionally understood to be required by phonetic structure, have not been a part of transformational generative phonologies, where alternations are described by feature-changing P-rules. ‘Conspiracies’, the justification of two or more alternation P-rules by some requirement of phonetic structure, have also gone unexpressed. Phonetic structure is properly expressed by non-transformational, non-directional neutralization rules, of which alternation P-rules are partial repetitions. Automatic alternations can be considered alternations of completely with incompletely specified phonemes, resulting from a neutralization of features. If the features subject to neutralization are so marked in lexical entries, this effectively represents the automatic allomorphs, permitting the non-directional phonetic-structure rules to accomplish automatic alternations by selecting the correct alternants in environments of neutralization. (An illustration of this is an automatic-alternation conspiracy in Kambata, a language of Ethiopia—resulting from historical assimilations, vowel deletion, and metathesis.) The result is a non-transformational phonology consistent with the general tendency of leveling—one in which automatic alternations, conspiracies, and all non-controversial generalizations are expressed in a grammar which prohibits ordered rules and requires that all rules and representations be surface-true.

The customary disjunctive marking of lexical entries for English nouns as [± countable] does not match the fact that the majority can be used both countably and uncountably in different NP environments: this binary opposition is characteristic not of the nouns, but of the NP's which they head. Nevertheless, nouns do have countability preferences; some enter countable environments more readily than others. And not all nouns occur in all kinds of countability environments. A noun's countability preference can be computed by checking its potential for occurrence in a definitive set of countability environments. In the dialect examined here, well-formedness conditions on NP must consider eight levels of countability among English nouns—not, as custom has it, only two.

The syntactic behavior of sequences like easy to please and hard to read contrasts sharply with that of sequences like easy for us to please and hard to try to please. Only the former may occur prenominally, and only they participate in certain lexical transformations. Moreover, only those strings which consist of an easy-type adjective followed by a single infinitive may freely undergo movement. This behavior is explained if such sequences are analysed as being structurally ambiguous, having lexical as well as syntactic derivations.

Not only the evidence of Gothic, but also that of North and West Germanic, speaks against the postulation of Proto-Germanic ‘umlaut’ allophones (§1). Furthermore, since even the results of the ‘earlier umlaut’ phenomena affecting */i e u/ in the various dialects point to the rise of allophonic variations in partly different environments, all the pre-literary vowel modifications produced by both vocalic and consonantal influences should be ascribed to the prehistory of the individual Germanic languages (§§2–3). The scarcity of forms with /e/ by a-umlaut of */i/ is explained through the assumption that the assimilation exerted by *[-a] on */i/ was widely resisted in order to avoid a merger of */i/ with */e/ (§2).

Consonant deletion processes may reduce sentence redundancy and thus increase the possibility of ambiguity. Historically, languages have adapted to such processes through a variety of changes in morphology and higher levels of grammar. Synchronic quantitative evidence of such adaptation is provided here through examination of the behavior of two Puerto Rican Spanish phonological variables which interact with the grammatical system in the capacity of plural markers. Although the data contain entire sentences with no morphological trace of the plural, this paper demonstrates that—through a complex interplay of semantic, syntactic, and morphological factors—no instance in the corpus shows ambiguity of number resulting from marker deletion.

Along with three traditional inflectional categories of Modern Russian numerals and adjectives (gender, number, and case), a fourth category is proposed: animacy, relevant in the accusative case for all Russian adjectives and some Russian numerals (ODIN ‘one’, DVA ‘two’, OBA ‘both’, TRI ‘three’, čETYRE ‘four’, and all collective numerals of the type DVOE ‘two’, TROE ‘three’, …) Thus, in Ja vižu krasivogo junošu ‘I see a handsome youth’, krasivogo ‘handsome’ is represented as KRASIVYJ(masc, sg, an, acc), as opposed to krasivyj ‘beautiful’ in Ja vižu krasivyj dom ‘I see a beautiful house’: KRASIVYJ(masc, sg, inan, acc). Two methodological principles are formulated: THE PRINCIPLE OF EXTERNAL AUTONOMY OF CASE FORMS (two different nominal word-forms cannot represent the same case if they are distributed according to external context), and THE PRINCIPLE OF SIMPLEST RESTRICTION (the subset of a paradigm for which a category is judged to be relevant should be specified by only one inflectional category). Seven facts about Russian morphology and syntax are cited to support the introduction of animacy for numerals and adjectives. Two further problems are discussed: the relationship between animacy and other inflectional categories of Adj and Num in Russian, and the relevance of animacy for Adj and Num lexemes.