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It is generally assumed that recurrent deviations from ordinary language in poetry have a non-complex relationship to ordinary grammar. This assumption has been formulated by Fabb (2010) as the Development Hypothesis (DH). In this paper, DH is elaborated within a generative framework and tested upon deviant word order in a sample of 19th century Swedish poetry. The result is that the hypothesis is fairly well corroborated, although not totally. In closing, an alternative hypothesis by Thoms (2010), the Non-Uniformity Hypothesis, is tested. It claims that poetry has more of its own syntax. This hypothesis is shown to yield, on the whole, predictions just as good as DH. Neither of the hypotheses, however, lasts the entire course.

There are two types of Japanese clefts, depending on the presence of a case particle attached to a focus item: multiple foci are possible only in clefts with case-marked foci. Despite attention in the literature, what has been overlooked is the possibility of mixed cases with the last focus item in multiple foci lacking a case particle. Multiple foci data pose a challenge to previous studies within Mainstream Generative Grammar, and in particular these partially case-marked multiple foci data. In this article, I show that a more dynamic conception of language, reflecting semantic incrementality as a core design feature of the grammar, can unify the two types of clefts and a range of further issues, including the partially case-marked foci data. Finally, the analysis is extended to long-distance clefts.

In the history of European Portuguese, from the 16th to the 19th century, clitic-placement underwent significant changes, specifically with respect to the environments where enclisis obligatorily occurs. In this paper, we show how the architecture of grammar proposed in Distributed Morphology (Embick and Noyer, 2001, 2006) can shed a light on this change. We analyze enclisis as the result of post-syntactic rules and we argue that the change involved a shift in the operation that displaces the clitic from Prosodic Inversion to Lowering, accounting for the different environments where enclisis obligatorily occurs across time. Moreover, the employment of such a view of the architecture of grammar allows us to interpret this shift as a case of grammaticalization, thus broadening the treatment of this concept in the framework of Generative Grammar.

This article is concerned with the question as to whether the components of grammar (syntax, semantics and phonology) have a similar architecture. I provide a modest historical background to the recurrent discussion about the parallelisms between syntax and phonology within Generative Grammar and mention some ‘meta-patterns’, i.e., shared properties of linguistic structures in different modules that are quite general and most likely not even specifically linguistic. I also discuss Anderson's [Anderson, J., 1992. Linguistic Representation: Structural Analogy and Stratification. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin] idea of Structural Analogy, the idea that, all things being equal, linguistic components and levels have similar structural properties. I argue in favor of a division between a word and a sentence subsystem for each of the three parallel grammatical components. Finally, I offer a general discussion of the place of phonology in the grammar and its relationship to phonetics. This section also sums up the main points of this article.

In this paper, we propose a derivational mode of interface, in which syntax feeds phonology and second position effects are accounted for without employing movement in the PF. More specifically, we claim that a phonology-controlled optimization procedure is responsible for second position clitic effects in Cypriot, Silli and Cappadocian. The syntax provides pairs of equally well-formed syntactic structures where the clitic is placed both before and after its verbal host, and the phonology picks up the ‘optimal’ one. As a consequence, the prosodic system that determines how clitics are to be incorporated in the prosodic structure, i.e. prosodic word or phonological phrase, also selects where a clitic will surface. A welcome result of the present proposal is that the ‘special’ position of clitics is not a lexical property of a group of clitics anymore nor the result of parochial alignment constraints, but the outcome of the grammar, i.e. constraint ranking.

This paper investigates the acquisition of extrasyllabic consonants in Polish on the basis of the body of longitudinal data from a Polish speaking child, 3;8–5;1. The data reveal several strategies adopted by the child to deal with the problematic consonants: deletion, vowel insertion and adjunction, each characterising a different stage of development. Shifting from one strategy to another seems to reflect a slow and gradual process of learning the intricate relationship between extrasyllabicity, prosodic affiliation and transparency vis-a-vis voicing processes found in adult Polish. The discernible reorganisation in the child's grammar seems to affect both underlying representations and phonological processes. The child's underlying representations are argued to be essentially adult-like in the sense that they are based on alternations rather than directly on adult surface forms. The shift in the processing strategies, analysed within Optimality Theory [henceforth, OT; Prince, A.S., Smolensky, P., 1993 . Optimality Theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. Unpublished manuscript, University of Rutgers, Rutgers, University of Colorado, Boulder; McCarthy, J., Prince, A.S., 1995. Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. Unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Rutgers University, Rutgers], is argued to be best motivated by developing units of prosodic organisation. The claim is that at the stages of development under discussion, the prosodic hierarchy is not fully activated in the child's output structure. Specifically, the child's outputs are organised into syllables but not into prosodic words. This explains not only why, in contradistinction to adult Polish, extrasyllabic segments exhibit no transparency effects at the adjunction stage but also why extrasyllabicity is initially resolved by deletion.

In this paper, we explore some of the insights into the grammar that become available with the use of a more strictly controlled judgement elicitation method, magnitude estimation (Bard et al, 1996; Cowart, 1997). In particular, we focus on wh-movement in German, and show how a range of assumptions, both specific to German grammar and more generally in syntactic study are made questionable. We apply this methodology to show that German respects superiority and discourse-linking (sensu Pesetsky, 1987), in contrast to the standard view in the literature, but in line with the predictions of generative grammar. But we further argue that this data type, and the gradient grammaticality that it reveals (Keller, 2000), permits us further insights into the nature of the grammar. The empirical results suggest that both the superiority effect and the discourse linking effect have rather different features to those generally assumed. On this basis, we advance novel suggestions as to the precise nature of these constraints. But more generally, we argue that this data type supports the hypotheses that grammatical constraints are violable, and that grammatical constraint violations are not necessarily fatal. We argue that the acceptance of these non-standard assumptions about the structure of the grammar is necessary since the abstractions underlying the standard assumptions about grammaticality are obscuring relevant information and distorting the data base of grammatical theory.

In this paper we report an investigation into the that-trace effect, a phenomenon which, in part because it is poorly understood, has played a significant role in syntactic theory building in the generative tradition. In spite of this, the effect is standardly thought to be absent from German. Using the methodology of magnitude estimation of well-formedness, which permits the elicitation of judgement data with increased definition, we tested the German equivalents to the English structures in which the that-trace effect is uncontroversially present (e.g. Cowart, 1997). The results showed the effect to be robustly active in the grammar of German too, independent of matrix verb. We further tested for the same effect in topicalization structures, with positive results. We argue that these outcomes provide support for a model of grammaticality incorporating gradience, in which constraint violations are survivable, since constraint application and output selection are separate functions of linguistic processing.

We argue that there are no devices in the grammar specific to coordination. The grammar is only capable of providing asymmetric structures, through particular lexical entries relating to semantic conjunction. Such entries produce adjunction structures, rather than head-complement structures. The interpretation of conjunction structures is a joint function of such lexical entries, processing properties, and pragmatics. Coordination phenomena are the result of an unresolved ambivalence between a ‘head initial’ and a ‘head final’ asymmetric conjunction structure, with the effect that there are parallel representations.

In Optimality Theory, the phonological grammar of each language is a particular ranking of a set of constraints C on [Prince and Smolensky, Optimality Theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. Unpublished manuscript, Rutgers University and University of Colorado, Boulder. Rutgers Optimality Archive ( http://roa.rutgers.edu ), ROA-537]. An understanding of universal grammar therefore requires an understanding of the nature of C on . Several researchers have argued that C on is systematically structured; in particular, that formally similar constraints should be modeled as specific instantiations of a general schema, such as the Generalized Alignment schema [Yearbook of Morphology 1993 (1993) 79]. One advantage of a schema-based approach to C on is that the formulation of each individual constraint is compositional, determined by the combination of the general schema (a function) with the specific phonological elements involved in each constraint (arguments of the function). This paper examines the formal structure of positional constraints—constraints that are relativized to certain phonological positions, such as stressed syllables or released consonants. Positional constraints are systematically related both to the general (non-positional) constraints on which they are based, and to other positional constraints for the same position. Therefore, these relationships should be formally captured with a compositional constraint schema. The focus here is on one particular set of positional constraints, the positional augmentation constraints (markedness constraints relativized to phonologically prominent positions). A compositional constraint schema is developed that is flexible enough to extend to the many different kinds of positions and constraints involved in positional augmentation, while still determining precisely how the formulation of each general constraint is to be modified in its positional counterpart. Implications of the approach for another set of positional constraints, the positional faithfulness constraints, are also considered.

This paper develops a generative analysis for a particular language contact phenomenon familiar in the variationist and language contact literature, namely indirect transfer [F. Klein, A quantitative study of syntactic and pragmatic indications of change in the Spanish of bilinguals in the U.S, in: W. Labov (Ed.), Locating Language in Time and Space, Academic Press, New York, 1980, p. 69; R. Mougeon, E. Beniak, Linguistic Consequences of Language Contact and Restriction: The Case of French in Ontario, OUP, Oxford, 1991; C. Silva-Corvalan, Language Contact and Change: Spanish in Los Angeles, OUP, Oxford, 1994]. This language contact effect, which is preferential rather than categorical, is difficult to deal with in traditional generative approaches, and has received no attention in this literature. My analysis focuses on Klein’s study of synthetic/analytic verb forms used for the expression of progressive aspect in Spanish, where contact with English causes a skewing in the distribution of use of analytic forms in a bilingual variety compared to a similar monolingual variety. The analysis is carried out in a stochastic OT [P. Boersma, B. Hayes, Empirical tests of the Gradual Learning Algorithm. Linguistic Inquiry 32 (1) (2001) 45–86] framework, where I show that the indirect transfer effects observed by Klein can be captured by way of different ranking of a small set of OT constraints on a linear ranking scale. In addition to providing a model for the indirect transfer effects in Klein’s study, my analysis also makes a typological prediction regarding morphosyntactic expression and Imperfective and Progressive verb forms: no language can have a synthetic Progressive and an analytic Imperfective. This prediction is supported by the absence of any such distribution in the surveys of Bybee et al. [The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994] or Dahl [Tense and Aspect Systems, Blackwell, Oxford, 1985].

This paper investigates the syntactic structure and pragmatic interpretation of topic and focus, in particular in Russian and Italian. It is argued that topic and focus do not correspond to specific syntactic positions [contra Rizzi, L., 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In: Haegeman, L. (Ed.), Elements of Grammar. Kluwer, Dordrecht]. On the contrary, topic and focus are associated with specific linear positions: topics are on the left edge and focus is on the right edge of the IP. Furthermore, it is argued that the informational component is interpretative and linear, whereas syntax is non-interpretative and hierarchical.

This paper examines the main ideas of the Minimalist Program (MP) with the aim of evaluating its virtues as a biological framework for the understanding of human language. Our conclusions are basically three. First, the MP favors a certain reconciliation between the abstract characterization of language and characterizations derived from other biological concerns. Second, the MP reduces the role of the genetic endowment for language and relies more on epigenetic processes, in clear agreement with other aspects of the study of the brain. Third, the MP favors an essential identification of the processes of ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of language, a rather controversial conclusion but also a very important one from a theoretical point of view.

This paper discusses major issues that have arisen in the analysis of sentences with complex predicates in Japanese from early transformational grammar to the present minimalist program. Particular emphasis is placed on the treatment of the causative construction to assess the influence of the lexicalist hypothesis and its aftermath. One recent development in the minimalist program that relates the issue raised by the light verb construction to the problem of complex predicates in general is surveyed. The paper ends by hinting at the human language faculty consisting of two overlapping but distinct grammars, a natural grammar of human instinct and a rational grammar of human intellect.

It is often assumed that the primitive units of grammar are words that are marked for grammatical category (e.g., DiSciullo, A.M., Williams, E., 1987. On the Definition of Word: MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). Based on a review of research in linguistics, neurolinguistics, and developmental psychology, we argue that dividing the lexicon into categories such as noun and verb offers no descriptive edge, and adds unnecessary complexity to both the theory of grammar and language acquisition. Specifically, we argue that a theory without lexical categories provides a better account of creative language use and category-specific neurological deficits, while also offering a natural solution to the bootstrapping problem in language acquisition (Pinker, S., 1982. A theory of the acquisition of lexico-interpretive grammars. In: Bresnan, J. (Ed.), The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 655–726).

The vast expressive power of language is made possible by two principles: the arbitrary sound-meaning pairing underlying words, and the discrete combinatorial system underlying grammar. These principles implicate distinct cognitive mechanisms: associative memory and symbol-manipulating rules. The distinction may be seen in the difference between regular inflection (e.g., walk-walked ), which is productive and open-ended and hence implicates a rule, and irregular inflection (e.g., come-came , which is idiosyncratic and closed and hence implicates individually memorized words. Nonetheless, two very different theories have attempted to collapse the distinction; generative phonology invokes minor rules to generate irregular as well as regular forms, and connectionism invokes a pattern associator memory to store and retrieve regular as well as irregular forms. I present evidence from three disciplines that supports the traditional word/rule distinction, though with an enriched conception of lexical memory with some of the properties of a pattern-associator. Rules, nonetheless, are distinct from pattern-association, because a rule concatenates a suffix to a symbol for verbs, so it does not require access to memorized verbs or their sound patterns, but applies as the ‘default’, whenever memory access fails. I present a dozen such circumstances, including novel, unusual-sounding, and rootless and headless derived words, in which people inflect the words regularly (explaining quirks like flied out, low-lifes , and Walkmans ). A comparison of English to other languages shows that contrary to the connectionist account, default suffixation is not due to numerous regular words reinforcing a pattern in associative memory, but to a memory-independent, symbol-concatenating mental operation.

In section 1 I discuss the pedagogical merits of these two texts, and section 2 takes up a detailed critique of their content and, in particular, their modes of argumentation. Four types of argument about the detailed syntax of particular languages are discussed, arguments from metatheoretical strength, arguments from semantics, arguments from simplicity, and arguments from explanation. The subsection on arguments from simplicity first emphasizes the importance of not confusing arguments from simplicity with straightforward arguments from the capacity of a grammar to generate the desired set of sentences. The steps involved in arguments from simplicity are then examined one by one. These steps are: identifying true generalizations, assessing their significance, and ‘capturing’ them. In the critique of these three modes of argumentation, from strength, from semantics, and from simplicity, the theme of the need to develop a seriously constrained metatheory emerges constantly. A final subsection briefly discusses arguments from explanation.

This paper discusses the analysis of Subject assignment in Serbo-Croatian in Dik (1980) and Dik and Gvozdanovic (1981). It is argued that the conclusion that Subject function is not relevant to the grammar of Serbo-Croatian is not tenable. It is also argued that Functional Grammar cannot account for the relationship between active and passive clauses in Serbo-Croatian since it recognizes only one level of syntactic representation. A constraint is proposed which makes the rule of Subject assignment in passive clauses sensitive to an initial assignment of Object to a non-Agent term; alternatively, Functional Grammar should be abandoned in favour of a theory which recognizes syntactic functions at more than one level.

Linguistic creativity is a traditionally-recongnized trait of natural language. Certain proposals in transformational linguistics seek to explain linguistic creativity with the help of the metamathematical notion of recursive rules. It is argued in this paper that a close investigation of this aspect of transformational theory reveals little empirical or conceptual support for inducting these rules from metamathematics into linguistic theory. Several major assumptions of transformational theory interact significantly with the axiomatic character of its recursive rules; some of these assumptions have been examined in this paper. In this connection, a brief comparison between transformational grammar and Pānini's linguistic theory — in the context of a prefactory remark on Pānini's grammar in Chomsky's Aspects — also appears to throw valuable light on the possible form the principle of linguistic creativity may take in the grammar of a natural language.

We examine the original goals of generative linguistic theory. We suggest that these goals were well defined but misguided with respect to their avoidance of the problem of modelling performance. With developments such as Generative Semantics, it is no longer clear that the goals are clearly defined. We argue that it is vital for linguistics to concern itself with the procedures that humans use in language. We then introduce a number of basic human competencies, in the field of language understanding, understanding in context and the use of inferential information, and argue that the modelling of these aspects of language understanding requires procedures of a sort that cannot be easily accomodated within the dominant paradigm. In particular, we argue that the procedures that will be required in these cases ought to be linguistic, and that the simple-minded importation of techniques from logic may create a linguistics in which there cannot be procedures of the required sort.