Collins et al. 2008 offers a principles-and-parameters-based analysis of an AAVE construction first described in Spears 1998, in which nominal phrases such as "John's ass" appear to have exactly the same denotation, and behavior with respect to familiar conditions on anaphora, as the possessor ["John," and similarly for pronominal possessors.…

Backward control is an obligatory interpretational dependency between an overt controller and a nonovert controllee in which the controllee is structurally superior to the controller: "Meg persuaded [Delta]i" ["Roni to give up"]. It contrasts with ordinary forward control, in which the controller is structurally higher: "Meg persuaded Roni"…

The reconstruction of genealogical relationships between languages is traditionally performed through lexical comparison and the establishment of regular sound changes. The historical analysis of other aspects of linguistic structure, like syntactic patterns or the function of grammatical elements, is normally understood to depend on a previously…

Noun-class prefixes are obligatory in most Bantu languages. However, the Sotho languages (Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi) permit a subset of prefixes to be realized as null at the intersection of "unmarked" phonological, syntactic, and discourse conditions. This raises the question of how and when the licensing of null prefixes is learned. Using…

Discusses alternatives to a number of assumptions fundamental to established linguistic theory which lead to a coherent view of linguistic structure that treats grammar as a symbolic phenomenon and emphasizes importance of analyzability to grammatical structure. Outlines descriptive framework called Space Grammar and its approach to semantic…

Presents an integrated theory of the syntactic and semantic representation of complements where the unexpressed subjects of the embedded verb-phrase complement are subject to certain interpretation restrictions. It is argued that the grammar of English controlled complements can be derived from the interaction of semantically based principles of…

Discusses comparative analysis of spoken and written versions of a narrative to demonstrate that features which have been identified as characterizing oral discourse are also found in written discourse and that the written short story combines syntactic complexity expected in writing with features which create involvement expected in speaking.…

Suggests that agent-focus verbs in Tzotzil are inverse, in the sense of Algonquian linguistics, and that their distribution is determined by the relative obviation status of agent and patient. Evidence for the analysis comes from syntactic constraints on agent-focus verbs and on their use in discourse. (Author/VWL)