This article examines the distribution of accusative case morphology in Kannada, detailing the syntactic, semantic, and morphological factors that contribute to its occurrence. Accusative case morphology is optional on inanimate direct objects. When optional, its presence indicates a specific reading, which I argue is best modeled as a choice function. The specific readings due to morphological form are distinct from specific readings that arise from syntactic position. Positional specificity is detectable only on morphologically noncasemarked object NPs. When the accusative case morpheme is obligatory, specificity effects are positional and not due to the presence of the morpheme. In this situation, additional morphology is required to achieve an inherently specific interpretation, suggesting a separation between morphological signals and meaning.

Roman Jakobson in memoriam, on the occasion of his hundredth birthday, October 12, 1996.

This article explores how memories of Muslim-Tibetan alliances predating Communist rule still shape social dynamics in Amdo. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Northwest China, it analyzes narratives about relationships between Muslim Xidaotang merchants and Tibetan religious or secular institutions. These accounts reinterpret the past to make sense of present relationships, reshaping the meaning of historical interactions. The paper examines the emblematic case of the offering of a large cauldron to a Tibetan monastery – an act of alliance rooted in local conflict-resolution practices. This tradition of gift-giving is traced within a broader inter-institutional economy sustained by reciprocal hospitality and protection. The Tibetan designation of Xidaotang merchants as Chösoma (“new religion/teachings”) highlights the role of ethical reputation and technical skill in building trust. The paper concludes by examining the evolution of Xidaotang’s Tian Xing Long commercial label amid China’s ongoing economic reforms. The narratives reveal a trading culture grounded in moral valuation, shared responsibilities, and economic collaboration.

Functional analyses of grammatical phenomena, and the functionalist approaches that promote them, are appealing to those who believe that an integrated view of language structure and language function is desirable. But functional analyses have been held to founder on basic grammatical facts that are taken to support the autonomy of grammar. The concept of autonomy is a complex one, and at least two different notions are found in current linguistic theory: arbitrariness and self-containedness. These notions of autonomy apply either to the syntactic component of the grammar, or (a more recent claim) to the grammar itself, with respect to change, use, and acquisition. The arbitrariness of syntax must be accepted; and many functional analyses are compatible with self- containedness. However, mixed formal/functional analyses provide an argument against the self-containedness of syntax, and in fact even many formal theories of syntax accept non-self-containedness. The arbitrariness of grammatical knowledge must also be accepted; and many functional analyses of the dynamic process affecting grammar are compatible with self-containedness. An argument against the self-containedness of grammar comes not from these functional analyses but from sociolinguistics.

Some, but not all, languages with fixed stress exhibit lexical exceptions to their stress rule. Under the assumption that lexical exceptions can occur in a language only if its native speakers can perceive stress contrasts, I argue that the presence of these exceptions depends on the age at which infants discover the stress rule of their language. If the stress regularity is easy to infer from the surface speech stream, then it will be acquired very early, and stress will not be encoded in the phonological representation of words in the mental lexicon; as a consequence, stress contrasts are not well perceived by adult speakers and lexical exceptions are excluded. If, by contrast, the regularity is difficult to infer, then it will be acquired relatively late, after the format of the phonological encoding of words has been fixed. That is, stress will be redundantly encoded in the mental lexicon, and lexical exceptions can thus be perceived and stored by adult speakers. A typological survey concerning the occurrence of exceptions in languages with fixed stress supports this proposal. A comparison with a metrical approach to exceptional stress is made, leading to a proposal about the division of labor between psycholinguistics and theoretical phonology.