This article explores the idea that obviation systems like those found in the Algonquian languages are a less parochial solution to syntactic organization than is generally thought. Some simple constraints on obviation provide interesting analyses of key facts in Algonquian. Once certain language-particular differences are recognized, a number of syntactic problems in two unrelated languages, Tzotzil (Mayan) and Chamorro (Western Austronesian), yield easily to solutions based on obviation, despite the absence of obviative-based morphology in either language. Hierarchy alignment constraints play a central role in the analysis. The account is articulated within optimality theory, which provides an appropriate framework for representing the fact that these languages must select from their resources for expressing transitive propositions the optimal mode of expression for each such proposition.

This article presents a linguistic analysis of a specific feature of a literary genre: the artificial punning found in the Egyptian Arabic narrative ballad (as described in Cachia 1989). A comparison of how these puns differ from regular processes in the phonology and morphology of the language reveals that this encoding by the poet-performer is very much a mirror image of regular processes. The audience's decoding of them, therefore, follows a pathway similar to regular processes. The dichotomy between the puns' linguistically based formal composition and their contextually based semantic interpretation is analyzed within a reinterpretation of a Jakobsonian structuralist framework involving a hierarchization of linguistic levels based on two factors: the degree of combinatoric freedom and the degree of semantic immediacy. This analysis reveals that the artificial punning in these ballads is actually the obverse of what one would expect to find following the definition of poetic discourse given by Roman Jakobson. This study thus shows that such artificial punning subverts normal expectations about poetic discourse and this has great implications for understanding the production and interpretation of literary word play in any tradition.

It is well known that personal pronouns in Japanese such as kare ‘he’ and kanozyo ‘she’, unlike their English counterparts, cannot be construed as bound variables in logical form. The purpose of this article is to argue that this cross-linguistic difference is due to the difference in syntactic categories. English personal pronouns are determiners (Postal 1969), exemplifying what will be referred to as D-PRONOUNS, and can be construed as bound variables, whereas Japanese personal pronouns are nouns, exemplifying what will be referred to as N-PRONOUNS, and cannot be so construed. I argue that this follows from a general condition on binding that applies only to functional items, and not to lexical ones. I provide empirical and conceptual support for this hypothesis on the basis of the behavior of such elements as articles, determiners, and demonstrative pronouns as well as that of personal pronouns.

This article presents the results of two studies which show that gender bias and stereotyping are widespread in the example sentences of syntax textbooks. Results from both studies indicate that little has changed over the past twenty-five years: virtually all of the authors favor male-gendered NPs as subjects and agents and regularly stereotype both genders. Throughout the paper we make reference to the LSA guidelines for nonsexist usage, pointing out the need for such guidelines, and highlighting the gaps in the current version.