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Most approaches to argument realization in English are grounded in lexical semantic structure. While it is widely acknowledged that there is an intimate relationship between information structure and grammatical relations such as "subject," there have been few attempts to formalize this observation. This dissertation proposes an "interface model of argument realization" in which information structure and lexical semantics jointly determine argument realization. The model proposes two mechanisms through which information structure drives argument realization. In "direct licensing," informational relations such as "topic" underlie the licensing of arguments. Though this is widespread in "topic-prominent" languages such as Mandarin, it is generally taken to be forbidden in "subject-prominent" languages such as English (Li and Thompson 1976). This dissertation demonstrates that direct licensing by information structure underlies a range of subject selection phenomena in English, and thus that languages fall along a continuum with respect to the availability of direct licensing. In the constructions that I investigate in depth, Topical Exclamatives and Copy Raising, the main-clause subject is licensed to function as a topic. This is formalized through a construction that changes the valence and the information structure requirements of the main predicate. The second mechanism, "resolution," has not been discussed in previous work. In resolution, information structure selects among two or more candidates for argument realization that satisfy the constraints of the lexical semantic system. This too is evident in English subject selection. I demonstrate that in the Instrument Subject construction, information structure resolves underspecified input from the lexical semantic linking system. In order to be realized as a subject, an instrument must be associated with a proposition that is activated in the discourse. This is implemented by a construction that pairs the linking of an instrument subject with specific informational constraints. The constructions that underlie Topical Exclamatives, Copy Raising, and Instrument Subjects can be seen as two concrete components of the often-assumed, but sometimes nebulous-seeming link between subjecthood and information structure in English. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

European modernist architectural design and urban planning for suburbs have often been theorized as dystopic creation myths. These narratives focus on the unfulfilled promises of activist designers to deliver equality, overscaled and generic neighborhoods, and contemporary social exclusion. Södertälje offers another view. This dissertation combines history, ethnography, and formal analysis to examine how architects, urban planners, and immigrant residents conflict and collaborate in the production of the city. The Swedish town of Södertälje serves as a lens through which to view these processes: it is both a nexus of high modernist spatial and social planning and the ostensible capital of the diasporic Syriac Christians, who now comprise approximately 26% of the local population. Postwar Swedish designers sought to reduce class differences through home standardization and a blurred public-private divide; this happened just as the country received numerous refugees, including Syriacs, who had left difficult conditions in Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon and quickly concentrated in Södertälje. There, they became active designers of a new urban landscape, first claiming welfare state public spaces but then slightly altering their uses. This suggests that “generic” modernist urbanism was more successful at accommodating difference than has typically been argued. More recently, Syriacs have built a state-of-the-art soccer stadium and colossal churches that – while sited in industrial zones in Södertälje – function as monuments and pilgrimage sites for the diaspora. In new, Syriac-dominated neighborhoods of custom-designed, single-family houses, Syriac participation has exceeded the “voice” that planners typically allocate to immigrants; their architectural displays of difference and affluent forms of segregation generate anxieties for planners trained in the welfare state’s traditions, which have long linked spatial uniformity to social equality. In aggregate, the Syriacs’ discrete projects have changed the way that the city functions, both in space and in the practices of the town’s expert designers, a development that I label “urban design from below.” This justifies a call for new orientations toward modernism, segregation, and participation in space making and suggests future trends for other European peripheries, where immigrants are also using and reconstructing postwar housing projects.