Most linguists who have investigated linguistic categories from a universal viewpoint have accepted the existence of two basic parts of speech, noun and verb. Other categories are found to be only inconsistently represented; thus adjective is manifested in many languages as a class of stative verb. Furthermore, individual languages often have intermediate categories such as gerund, which cannot be unambiguously assigned to a single category. We suggest here that the basic categories N and V are to be viewed as universal lexicalizations of the prototypical discourse functions of ‘discourse-manipulable participant’ and ‘reported event’, respectively. We find that the grammars of languages tend to label the categories N and V with morpho-syntactic markers which are iconically characteristic of these categories to the degree that a given instance of N or V approaches its prototypical function. In other words, the closer a form is to signaling this prime function, the more the language tends to recognize its function through morphemes typical of the category—e.g. deictic markers for N, tense markers for V. We conclude by suggesting that categoriality itself is another fundamental property of grammars which may be directly derived from discourse function.

The nature of the auxiliary system in English has drawn much attention in the past fifteen years because it involve fundamental issues in linguistic theory, such as categories and the nature of levels of representation. This article presents an analysis of the English auxiliary system within the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar (cf. Bresnan 1982c). By presenting explicit representations and explicit rules (syntactic and lexical), we find that an analysis incorporating a distinction between Modals and Verbs, in which auxiliaries like have and be belong to one of these categories depending on inflectional properties of particular forms, can explain all the relevant facts about auxiliaries that have appeared in the literature, Explicit analyses for ‘irregular’ auxiliaries like ought and used to are also provided.

This paper argues that control relations are primarily characterized in terms of thematic relations. The notion Primary Location, defined on the basis of thematic structures, is shown to be crucially necessary for thematically determined cases of control. It is also shown that thematically determined control has a set of properties which are not possessed by cases of control which cannot be determined thematically, and that most of them are derived from the properties of thematic relations. Further, a locality principle of control is proposed here, based on the notion Thematic Domain; and it is shown that thematic control requires the presence of a Primary Location within this local domain.

The click sounds of two Khoisan languages, Nama and !Xóō, are described in considerable phonetic detail in order to demonstrate some of the complex, language-specific phenomena that must be taken into account in linguistic descriptions. Phonological features that can be used to classify these sounds are given; but it is shown that the detail of the phonetic phenomena can be recovered from the phonological specifications only by a considerable number of ad-hoc statements.

A hierarchy is here proposed involving three groups of grammatical categories. For most three-part combinations of these categories—occurring in a specific, very common structural configuration—a rule based on this hierarchy generates two linear orders. It is shown that, on the basis of various cross-linguistic studies, one of the orders so generated is the one found in most languages. The principle proposed is shown to compare favorably with other principles which purport to account for cross-linguistic generalizations about word order.

This paper is an attempt to incorporate a description of some segmental rules of English into the framework of cyclic phonology which has grown out of the classical SPE type of phonology, on the one hand, and Kiparsky's works, on the other. The discussion is organized around the problems of palatalization in American English. The rules arrived at are divided into cyclic and postcyclic types, and some predictions which follow from the proposed division are discussed. The analysis considers a number of modifications in the statement of rules originally introduced in SPE.

The obligatoriness of English bisentential too varies with the prominence of the focus on contrasting constituents. This fact leads to a possible explanation for its obligatoriness: too is obligatory where an overt element is needed to emphasize what is important about the content of a two-clause text—i.e., when what is important is that the same thing is predicated about two contrasting items. Too is just the element to do this, because of what it conventionally implicates (that what is predicated by the speaker about the contrasting item in one clause is also predicated about the contrasting item in the other) and because of its hypothesized discourse function (to emphasize the similarity between contrasting constituents).

The analysis of formulaic German binomial expressions of the form N und N reveals the following characteristics. The absence of determiners, along with other morphosyntactic and semantic anomalies, makes these phrases non-compositional and thus similar to idioms; but they differ from fixed idiomatic expressions in that their structural pattern can be productively used for the creation of new pairs. These bare binomials are not exhaustively listable lexical items, nor can they be generated by a syntactic conjunction rule. Their formal properties suggest that they are complex word-like expressions—comparable in many ways to nominal compounds and, like compounds, describable by lexical rules. Their creation and use is subject to semantic and pragmatic constraints which can be subsumed under a general principle of frame structure. They can be divided into three main types: (a) lexicalized and irreversible, (b) novel but semantically motivated, and (c) semantically unmotivated but pragmatically constrained. However, sharp lines between lexicalized and novel instances, or between semantically and pragmatically motivated types, cannot be drawn on principled grounds. Bare binomials lend support to a view of language in which the ‘generative’ and the ‘idiomatic’ components are two extremes on a continuum, rather than fundamentally distinct phenomena.

Sentence topics are linguistic constituents, with syntactic and semantic properties which single them out for a linking function in the process of relating a sentence to its discourse context. This paper explores the relation between the linguistic properties of sentence topics and their use as discourse links in sentence processing. It proposes a set of criteria for distinguishing relatively weak or strong topic NP's, based on syntactic and semantic/pragmatic properties. Syntactically defined topics include subjects and those in ‘marked’ NP positions, where the surface features define grammatical function in an ambiguous or indirect way. Implications of this proposal are drawn for several languages, and for various models of language processing.

This paper criticizes the view of Hawkins (1979, 1980, 1982) that the theory of Universal Grammar must include implicational and distributional universals of word order. It shows that universals based on frequency counts of surface word order—as worked out, e.g., by Greenberg 1966—need to be reformulated in order to be relevant to the problem of language acquisition. More specifically, it discusses H's claim that the principle of Cross-Category Harmony can shed light on the proper formulations of the X' schemas of generative grammar. Finally, it is shown how survey studies of word order can be relevant to forming initial hypotheses about certain properties of grammar, and how the study of language typology might proceed within the generative framework.

This paper argues for a more structured view of the relation between the phonological feature [voice] and its specific phonetic implementations. Under the theory of universal phonetics proposed here, the implementation of [voice] is sharply constrained: the opposition is defined relatively, as more or less voicing, along a dimension consisting of exactly three discrete, ordered categories, which can be shown to have clear articulatory and acoustic bases. While the phonological feature allows certain rule equivalences across languages to be expressed, the phonetic categories describe possible contrasts within languages, and express markedness relations.

Many languages use haplology, suppletion, and the blocking of derivations to achieve avoidance of ‘accidental’ repetition of surface morphs. At the same time, many languages permit accidental repetition and even encourage ‘deliberate’ repetition through reduplication. Strong universal constraints against morph repetition therefore fail. This furthermore implies the inadequacy of accounts of morphological processes in terms of matching templates or schemas. We present a psycholinguistic processing model built on evidence from language acquisition, and drawing on activation theory, which affords a unification of the linguistic data while allowing for their variety.

Noun incorporation is perhaps the most nearly syntactic of all morphological processes. Examination of the phenomenon across a large number of geographically and genetically diverse languages indicates that, where syntax and morphology diverge, incorporation is a solidly morphological device that derives lexical items, not sentences. It is used for four different but related purposes; these fall into an implicational hierarchy which in turn suggests a path along which incorporation develops historically. Differences in its productivity from language to language show that this development may be arrested at any point—resulting either in the eventual disappearance of the process, or in its resurgence as a productive system of affixation.

The Latin vowels ě ⊖, pronounced in Late Antiquity as /ɛ / respectively, yielded rising diphthongs, usually /je we/, in Old Spanish stressed syllables, whether checked or free: FěRRU > fierro ‘iron’, C⊖RNU > euerno ‘horn’. Before certain palatal and prepalatal consonants (e.g. /j ž/), the monophthongs failed to diphthongize: SěDEAT > /sɛja/ > sea ‘let it be’, H⊖DIE > /je/ > (h)oy ‘today’, FOLIA > /fλa/ > foja ‘leaf’. However, the same environment long believed to have blocked diphthongization in Old (or Proto-) Castilian has been credited with stimulating that process to the north of the Pyrenees.

A new attack on the old problem is here undertaken, starting with the apophonically conditioned pairs RěGERE/RēGULA, TěGěRE/TěGULA, and SěCāRE/SēCULA. In a backward section of the Republic and the Empire, speakers could easily have been misled into transmuting SPěCULU ‘mirror’ into *SPēCULU etc., with /e: o:/—not subject to diphthongization—substituted for /ɛ / in words of the indicated syllabico-accentual structure.

Children, like adults, coin words to fill lexical gaps. To do this, children must build up a repertoire of word formation devices to use. This study examines the influence of semantico transparency, of formal simplicity, of productivity, and of conventionality on the acquisition of a repertoire of word formation devices by looking at the role of these principles in Hebrew-speaking children's coinages of novel agent and instrument nouns, and comparing their patterns of acquisition to those of English-speaking children for the same lexical domains.

By presenting evidence from three different sound changes within the history of English, this paper demonstrates that sound changes do not always affect the most frequent words first; on the contrary, certain changes affect the least frequent words first. A comparison of sound changes exhibiting each direction of diffusion reveals that changes affecting the most frequent words first are motivated by physiological factors, acting on surface phonetic forms; changes affecting the least frequent words first are motivated by other, non-physiological factors, acting on underlying forms. Thus a direct correlation is drawn between the direction of diffusion and the actuation of sound change.

Quechua-speaking children in Peru speak Spanish with variable word order in the VP and the NP; the alternative patterns stem from Quechua and Spanish. The younger the child, the more predominant are the V-final and N-final phrases, as in Quechua. Here we investigate whether the newly acquired Spanish V-medial clause and N-initial phrase patterns are learned in a sequence predicted by a theory of linguistic change. Several plausible alternatives that are consistent with the Trigger-Chain Theory or Universal Violation Hypothesis, and with the Universal Consistency Hypothesis (UCH) of Hawkins 1979, were checked against recorded speech by Peruvian bilingual children of three different ages. Our quantitative analysis strongly supports the UCH—in particular, Hawkins“ Universals I and III. These predict that the V-medial clause pattern emerges before the postnominal genitive, and this in turn precedes the use of the postnominal adjective. Our data also justify strengthening two of the principles in the UCH.

Segmental length can be analysed in one of three possible ways: as a segmental feature, as gemination, or as a suprasegmental. These three analyses make different predictions about how length should behave in language production. Treating length as a suprasegmental predicts that it will frequently be dissociated from a segment, while the other analyses predict it will usually not be. Speech error corpora in German, Swedish, and English are examined. The data suggest a suprasegmental analysis, most probably along the lines of recent autosegmental descriptions: long segments are associated with two positions in the syllable structure. A vowel and its associated structure show different degrees of cohesiveness in different languages, so that they behave quite differently in errors in the different languages.