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The aim of this paper is to present Optimality theory (OT), one of the most prominent contemporary linguistic theories developed in the 1990s by two phonologists alan Prince and Paul Smolensky (1991/1993, 2004). In OT's view language is in constant search for the optimal surface forms levelling between two types of conflicted demands on well-formedness. although it is mainly concerned with phonological phenomena, its applicability to other linguistic areas has made it popular among linguists with different linguistic backgrounds and interests (cf. Boersma, dekkers and Van der Weijer 2000: 1). OT's typological character maybe had an even more important role for its success (cf. McCarthy 2002: 1). The paper deals with the motivation that stands behind it presenting the context of its development mostly with respect to the mainstream generative approach of the time and the Stampe's natural Phonology (1979), pointing out the differences (as well as similarities) between them. OT's ideas and basic terms (constraints, markedness, faithfulness, optimality) as well as its architecture of grammar (generator, evaluator etc.) are discussed in the paper. The explanation of OT's tableau with its symbols is given and finally elaborated in the analysis of two phonological phenomena: voicing assimilation in obstruent clusters in Croatian and devoicing of word final obstruents characteristic for the kajkavian dialect, following lombardi's (1996, 1999) set of constraints that account for patterns of voicing assimilation and devoicing phenomena across languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide a brief overview of the past studies on negation, starting from Jespersen (1917) to the more recent ones that are elaborated within the generative grammar and based on Klima (1964). In the work of Klima (1964) and all subsequent works on the grammar of negation, such as Lasnik (1972), Pollock (1989), Laka (1990), Progovac (1994, 2005), Haegeman (1995) and Zanuttini (1997), attention has been confined to a formal means for expressing the meaning of sentence negation. Linguists have been trying to establish whether natural languages have a universal formal feature that corresponds to the meaning of negation. As a formal representation of negation they proposed the Neg symbol, the NegP projection and the Spec-Head relation. Furthermore, the focus of their studies has been onthe licensing of negative polarity items (henceforth, the NPI licensing), relative scope of negation and c-command. T he NPI licensing has been examined in terms of whether the licensing principles mainly syntactic in nature, semantic-pragmatic, or both, and whether it is autonomous in the sense that functions only for the NPI licensing or it is tied to the principles of other modules. Studies on relative scope of negation and c-command have been trying to determine to what extent, if at all, syntactic structures are responsible for the scope of negation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structure of multiple wh-questions differs significantly in the English and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language, firstly, with respect to the number of wh-phrases positioned at the beginning of the sentence and, secondly, with respect to the free vs. strict Superiorityobeying ordering of these wh-phrases. The gist of this article is the contrastive syntactic analysis of multiple wh-questions in two aforementioned languages in the theoretical framework of Minimalist program in generative grammar. Our main argument is that these questions should be analyzed as CP projections in both languages, contrary to some previous findings, namely Bošković's (1997, 1998) analysis of these questions, in which the author maintains that null-C wh-questions in Bosnian/Croatian/ Serbian are analyzed as simple AgrsP projections. The analysis of multiple wh-questions in English is based on the underlying assumption that only one wh-phrase moves into the vicinity of the complementiser C in order to check its uninterpretable WH feature. The uninterpretable feature of C [uWh] having been checked and deleted, every other movement of wh-phrases is prevented by the principle of economy. On the other hand, the analysis of multiple wh-questions in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian rests on the assumption that wh-phrases in this language have uninterpretable focus feature [uFoc], besides interpretable interrogative feature [iWh], which triggers their movement into the checking domain of Focus head, i.e. FP, the projection positioned between CP and TP. Apart from focus movement, one wh-phrase obligatorily moves to spec-CP to check the uninterpretable wh-feature of C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In generative grammar, questions with wh-question word in the English language are usually named wh-questions, because all wh-words, with the exception of 'how', begin with consonants 'wh' in written English. However, a further distinction needs to be made between wh-questions in which wh-word has the grammatical function of being the subject and those in which whword fulfils the grammatical function of object or adjunct, i.e. subject and non-subject wh-questions. It is important to draw this distinction in every in-depth analysis of wh-questions in English, because the structure of these two types of wh-questions differs significantly. This difference is especially noticeable when only the main (lexical) verb is used in their formation, i.e. in auxiliariless questions. In that case, in the formation of non-subject whquestions the DO-support operation has to be applied and the auxiliary verb DO is used to support the stranded affix, while in the formation of subject wh-questions DO is not inserted into the structure and inflectional suffixes are lowered onto the main verb (Affix lowering). This essential difference in the structure of subject and nonsubject wh-questions shows that non-subject questions necessarily involve T-to-C movement operation of verbal element, while subject wh-questions do not. This raises the important question as to whether subject questions are CP-projections like non-subject wh-questions or whether they only project as high as TP. With respect to that, in the first two sections of this paper we carry out a comparative analysis of subject and non-subject wh-questions in English and briefly outline different approaches to the study of subject question structure and their deficiencies. In the concluding section of the paper we try to offer a new and comprehensive solution for the asymmetry in T-to-C movement in these subtypes of wh-questions in English by applying the PF-merger under adjacency analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]