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We argue that young German children have the major functional sentential heads, in particular the inflectional and complementizer systems. The major empirical basis is natural production data from a 25-month-old child. We perform quantitative analyses which show that the full complement of functional categories is available to the child, and that what crucially distinguishes the child's grammar from the adult's is the use of infinitives in matrix clauses. The evidence we consider includes the child's knowledge of finiteness and verb placement, agreement, head movement, and permissible word-order variations. We examine several accounts which presuppose a degenerate grammar or which deviate from the standard analysis of German and conclude that they provide a less adequate explanation of the acquisition facts.
The investigation of data from many languages has the following results: (a) the characteristics of classifier languages are distinguished, and four types are identified; (b) defining criteria are postulated for classifiers, and it is discovered that every classifier is composed of one or more out of seven categories of classification. It is argued that classifiers typically index some perceived characteristic of the phenomenon to which the classification refers, and so the recurrence of similar noun classes in unrelated and geographically separated classifier languages shows that diverse language communities categorize perceived phenomena in similar ways.
The complex phonology of Slovak syllabic nuclei is studied from the twin perspectives of three-dimensional representation theory and Lexical Phonology. A variety of evidence is adduced to show the necessity of recognizing a distinct nucleus node in the internal structure of the syllable. It is also argued that Slovak syllabic nuclei are right-headed metrical structures. The well-known Slovak Rhythmic Law, shortening the first of two successive long syllables, is demonstrated to be a cyclic rule. It is argued that its cyclicity follows necessarily from the Lexical Phonology model.