In many languages the definite article cannot occur when a possessive phrase is present in the NP (e.g. English the my book, John's the book). I argue that these patterns can be understood in terms of economic motivation because possessed NPs are very likely to be definite. A structural explanation in terms of a unique determiner position is insufficient to account for the full range of attested crosslinguistic patterns, and the universal generalizations that do seem to be valid can be derived from the economy-based explanation. Finally I show how the performance motivation of economy creates the competence pattern in diachronic change.

This article examines crosslinguistic variation in FILLER-GAP DEPENDENCIES (WH-questions and relative clauses) from a processing perspective, and integrates research findings from psycholinguistics, language typology and generative grammar. Numerous implicational universals and hierarchies are proposed that receive a natural explanation in terms of processing and complexity. Filler-gap domains are complex in proportion to their size and in proportion to the amount of simultaneous syntactic and semantic processing that is required in addition to gap identification. They are simplified by making the gap easier to identify and process, or by avoiding a gap structure altogether. When grammatical variation is viewed from this perspective many descriptive insights and implicational patterns can be motivated that have either been stipulated or that have gone unnoticed hitherto. This approach provides an alternative to the assumption of innate parameterized subjacency constraints in this area.

Efforts to determine the genetic relations among Tungusic languages have been dominated by a methodology that categorizes the entire family on the basis of a small number of sound correspondences and some shared inflectional morphology, despite the fact that this evidence can be interpreted in contradictory ways. The approach, styled after traditional classification, which uses a tree model, is even less successful in indicating the relationships among languages at a finer level of detail. This article demonstrates that two Tungusic languages, Evenki and Oroqen, which have long been treated as a single language for classification purposes, are better treated as distinct linguistic varieties. The article raises fundamental questions about the current classification of Tungusic languages and suggests a renewed examination of the role of dialect continua and contact languages in understanding the composition of the family. Finally, we question whether a tree-based model is appropriate for classifying languages that have had a high degree of contact and are found in families or branches of a shallow time depth.

This article discusses the grammaticalization of Tok Pisin laik 'want/like/desire' (from English like) and klostu 'near' (from English close to) as markers of what Heine (1994b) has called the proximative with the meaning 'almost', 'nearly', 'be about to', etc. I will show that although klostu was more generally a feature of Pacific Pidgin English and began to grammaticalize in the mid-nineteenth century, it is now in competition with laik, which is a development specific to twentieth-century Tok Pisin, a pidgin/creole language spoken in Papua New Guinea. The fact that Tok Pisin has two constructions, of different origin and time depth, expressing the proximative yields valuable data contributing to a typology of a much neglected grammatical notion and sheds some light on the grammaticalization paths along which proximatives develop.

In a recent issue of Language (March 1998) Sarah Julianne Roberts attributed to me many claims that I never made and grossly misrepresented what I actually stated about the role of a worldwide nautical pidgin English in the formation of Hawaiian Creole English. Apart from a brief restatement (see below), everything that I wrote concerning that specific topic was contained in a single paragraph (Goodman 1985:111), which I reproduce here in its entirety (minus two nongermane footnotes):

Clark (1979), in a detailed comparative study of various forms of Pacific pidgin English utilizing much linguistic and historical documentation, has demonstrated obvious links between Hawaiian pidgin English and the others and even between these and New World creole English. Some are purely lexical (e.g., the ubiquitous savvy 'to know' and pickanniny 'child, small' as well as Hawaiian kaukau 'eat' from Chinese pidgin English chauchau, recorded as early as the late eighteenth century; Carr 1972:4), but others are structural (e.g., the use of been as a past or anterior marker, found in Hawaiian and Melanesian pidgin English and virtually all forms of Atlantic creole English). No doubt, these similarities are traceable to a worldwide nautical pidgin English, with which Hawaiians had considerable contact throughout most of the nineteenth century. Chinese pidgin English, itself evidently an outgrowth of the same nautical pidgin, had at least some direct impact on the emerging Hawaiian pidgin toward the end of the eighteenth century. Samples of the early Hawaiian pidgin are rare, but Clark (1979) has unearthed some interesting ones from Dana's (1840) Two Years Before the Mast, for example, "by-' em-by money paw-all gone; then kanaka work plenty .... We no all'e same'a' you! Suppose one got money, all got money. You-suppose one got money-lock him up in chest." It seems clear that it was out of this type of English, known as hapa haole or 'half white' (see below) that the plantation creole developed. According to W.C. Smith (1933:18): "The plantation foremen were often Hawaiians who spoke the Hawaiian-English pidgin." Thus, it is undeniable that there are historical links between Hawaiian creole English and forms of pidgins and creole English in other parts of the world, though to what extent these links explain structural similarities is a matter for further investigation.

Morris Goodman brings into focus an error which is of minor consequence to my article (correcting it alters neither my analysis nor the article's theoretical importance) but has significance in assessing Goodman's contribution to the debate on creole origins. My error was in linking Goodman too closely to an explicit model that was fully developed by John Holm (1986, 1988, 1989, 1992).