This paper systematically considers the full range of topic structures in Chinese. Such structures are syntactically characterized by the rule schema S' → X {S, S‘}, where X, the topic, is any major category, and S or S’, the comment, is another topic structure or a sentence which is independently well-formed. Some constituent of the comment, or the comment as a whole, must be related to the topic. If the related constituent is an empty category, it is interpreted not as a variable bound by the topic, but as a pro-form whose antecedent is the topic.

The punctuation (accent) system of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible contains a complete unlabeled binary phrase-structure analysis of every verse, based on a single parsing principle. The systems of punctuation, phrase structure, and parsing are each presented here in detail and contrasted with their counterparts in modern linguistics. The entire system is considered as the product of linguistic analysis, rather than as a linguistic system per se; and implications are drawn for the study of written language and writing systems.

Italian sentences which appear to lack propositional arguments of verbs are shown to be base-generated without these verb complements. This analysis accounts for a wide range of syntactic and semantic data, including the fact that movement rules never appear to have operated out of missing complements. The possibility for a given lexical item to lack such a complement is arbitrary (i.e., it is a subcategorization fact); the so-called missing complement need not be associated with a specific interpretation. The polarity, tense, and person of a verb affect the possibility of its allowing a missing complement.

In previous work on cliticization, it has been assumed that two and only two strategies are available for clitic positioning: sentential second-position cliticization (Wackernagel's Law) and cliticization to a specified lexical class, most commonly V. Moreover, it has been assumed that the host in terms of which the clitic is positioned, i.e. the structural or lexical host, must also necessarily be the phonological host. This paper shows that the structural and phonological hosts need not be the same; i.e., clitics can simultaneously attach syntactically to a structural host, while attaching independently to a different phonological host. Thus the two-strategy assumption of clitic positioning and attachment is inadequate. Instead, three independent parameters are required. These binary parameters encode two structural notions—dominance and precedence—and one phonological notion—liaison. The values of the parameters constrain possible clitics to eight types, each of which is illustrated in this paper. These parameters are encoded in the lexical subcategorization frame for clitics. It is shown that clitics are phrasal affixes. Although languages appear to differ widely in types of clitics and cliticization, this paper shows how a unitary analysis of apparently diverse clitic types is possible in terms of the three-parameter system. Languages analysed include Classical Greek, Spanish, French, Ngiyambaa, Nganhcara, and some Uto-Aztecan languages.

When ‘marked’ or ‘external’ negation has not been treated as an additional semantic operator alongside the straightforward truth-functional, presupposition-preserving ordinary (‘internal‘) negation, it has been collapsed with internal negation into a unified general logical operator on propositions. Neither of these approaches does justice to the differences and kinships between and within the two principal varieties of negation in natural language. Marked negation is not reducible to a truth-functional one-place connective with the familiar truth-table for negation, nor is it definable as a separate logical operator; it represents, rather, a metalinguistic device for registering objection to a previous utterance (not proposition) on any grounds whatever, including the way it was pronounced.