The right roof constraint'' is the assumption that rightward-movement rules are always upward-bounded; see J.R. Ross' dissertation, Constraints on Variables in Syntax'' (MIT, 1967). (RS)

The constraints in English on the definiteness, specificity, humaness and animacy of noun phrases (NP's) undergoing passive and dative movement are examined. Evidence presented shows that these constraints occur in other languages in marked and unmarked constructions as absolute constraints on acceptability or as tendencies. This suggests a…

It is asserted that the treatment of intonation within the framework of generative grammar has not shown whether surface syntactic structure is sufficient for formulation of phonological rules. An attempt is made to demonstrate that within English phonology reference to deep structure is necessary. (Available from: See FL 508 214). (RM)

Four hypotheses concerning the linguistic structure of yes-no questions and their answers are considered as hypotheses relating to the abstract structure of yes-no questions and to this abstract structure in all human languages. The universal base hypotheses are the following: (1) The abstract representation of all yes-no questions includes two…

Treats the general linguistic aspect of Fillmore's theories. (RM)

A critical review of the development of case theory as put forth by N. Chomsky, C. J. Fillmore, J. M. Anderson, J. J. Robinson, and S. Starosta. (Text is in French.) (AM)

An analytic sketch of motion/location in more primitive spatio-temporal terms is presented. The earlier account (ED 096 825), showing various languages' most characteristic pattern for deriving a putatively-universal underlying representation of motion and location, is continued. The English pattern is characterized further (amplified by data from…

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of coordination reduction in various languages and to propose a universal set of rules that will account for all types of coordination reduction. In a brief discussion of some of the more recent proposals on coordination reduction it will be shown that these proposals fail to account for the…

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how languages express contrastive emphasis. It is argued that all contrastively emphasized constructions have underlying cleft sentences, independent of whether the surface structure is an equational or a nonequational one. It is furthermore argued that emphatic word orders are systematic and predictable…