I argue in this article that adverb-forming -ly, unlike its adjective-forming counterpart, is an inflectional suffix, that therefore adverbs containing -ly are inflected adjectives and that, consequently, adverbs not containing -ly are uninflected adjectives. I demonstrate that in English, the traditional category Adverb is morphologically non-distinct from the category Adjective in that it has no morphology of its own but instead shares all relevant aspects of the morphology of adjectives. I demonstrate moreover that such an analysis explains various aspects of morphological and phonological behaviour on the part of adverbial -ly which differ from the behaviour of adjectival -ly and/or from the behaviour of derivational suffixes. And I argue that contrary to a recent claim, the syntactic behaviour of adverbs presents no obstacle to the single-category analysis of adjectives and adverbs warranted by the morphology.

Dental pronunciation of alveolar consonants before /r/ and /ər/ is a well-known feature of traditional varieties of Irish English. This Pre-R Dentalisation (PreRD) has a number of intriguing linguistic properties, in particular an associated /r/-Realisation Effect and a Morpheme Boundary Constraint. It is less well known that PreRD is (or perhaps was) also a feature of a number of English varieties outside Ireland, particularly in traditional northern English dialects. This article analyses dialect data from northern England in order to determine the nature of PreRD there and its historical relations with the phenomenon in Irish English. In addition, it explores the phonological complexities of PreRD in light of the loss of rhoticity in traditional northern English dialects.

English makes regular use of a number of recursive structures spanning the syntax–lexicon continuum. While NPs with recursive relative clauses occupy the syntactic end, nominal compounds are located at the lexical end. In between these extremes we find NPs with recursive periphrastic genitives (towards the syntactic end) and NPs with recursive Saxon genitives (towards the lexical end). This study presents a comparative analysis of the branching direction preferences in these recursive structures. The empirical focus is on double of-genitives, which exhibit an overwhelming predilection for right-branching. This contrasts sharply with the double Saxon genitives, which gravitate towards left-branching. The branching direction decision is argued to be under the sway of several distinct factors: a syntactic factor controlling the alternative between leftward and rightward expansion; a lexical factor regulating the idiomatization of a given pair of elements; and a processing factor geared towards preventing garden path effects. Furthermore, branching direction is determined by listeners’ desire to minimize constituent recognition domains. Taken together, these factors are held accountable for the varying branching direction biases found in the different types of NP.

This article investigates the nature of preposition copying and preposition pruning structures in present-day English. We begin by illustrating the two phenomena and consider how they might be accounted for in syntactic terms, and go on to explore the possibility that preposition copying and pruning arise for processing reasons. We then report on two acceptability judgement experiments examining the extent to which native speakers of English are sensitive to these types of ‘error’ in language comprehension. Our results indicate that preposition copying creates redundancy rather than ungrammaticality, whereas preposition pruning creates processing problems for comprehenders that may render it unacceptable in timed (but not necessarily in untimed) judgement tasks. Our findings furthermore illustrate the usefulness of combining corpus studies and experimentally elicited data for gaining a clearer picture of usage and acceptability, and the potential benefits of examining syntactic phenomena from both a theoretical and a processing perspective.

This article explores the motivations behind the loss of a number of Germanic prefixes in the history of English. Using Old and Middle English translations of Boethius’ de Consolatione Philosophiae as a corpus, it is shown that prefix loss is not specific to a single word category, nor to the presence of morphosyntactic characteristics such as prefix separability. This state of affairs cannot be explained by current theories of prefix loss, which are generally restricted to inseparable verbal prefixes. The fact that some prefixes are lost and some are preserved, also argues against an across-the-board grammaticalisation account, based mostly on semantic factors. It is held here that a closer look at the prosodic structure of native prefixes can provide a principled explanation for the entirety of our data. To this effect, the optimisation of a resolved moraic trochee (Dresher & Lahiri, 1991) amid significant restructuring of the language's lexicon had crucial impact on the fate of prefixed words. In particular, Early Middle English would have come to prefer maximal, branching feet, and avoid words with prefixes constituting heavy, non-branching feet. Ultimately, the preservation of prosodic structure led to the loss of heavy monosyllabic prefixes due to stress clash between prefix and root. Light monosyllabic and bisyllabic prefixes, in contrast, were preserved, since no clash occurred. This argument explains the changes in prefixation from a purely prosodic standpoint, hence accounting for the data for both verbal and nominal prefixes, which were heretofore dealt with separately.

In both standard and nonstandard varieties of English there are several contexts in which the word never functions as a sentential negator rather than as a negative temporal adverb. This article investigates the pragmatic and distributional differences between the various non-temporal uses of never and examines their synchronic and historical relationship to the ordinary temporal quantifier use, drawing on corpora of Early Modern and present-day British English. Primary focus is on (i) a straightforward negator use that in prescriptively approved varieties of English has an aspectual restriction to non-chance, completive achievement predicates in the preterite, but no such restriction in nonstandard English; and (ii) a distinct categorical-denial use that quantifies over possible perspectives on a situation. Against Cheshire (1998), it is argued that neither of these uses represents continuity with non-temporal uses of never in Middle English, but both are instead relatively recent innovations resulting from semantic reanalysis and the semanticization of implicatures.

The occurrence of the Old English negative particle ne ‘not’ preceding a bare infinitive rather than a finite verb is a largely neglected or overlooked phenomenon. It is attested in constructions with uton ‘let's’ and in conjoined clauses with omission of the finite verb (Mitchell 1985). This article discusses evidence gathered mainly from the York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose, showing that it is a phenomenon that needs to be taken seriously in descriptions and analyses of Old English. It is argued that the factor shared by the two constructions is the lack of an available finite verb for ne to attach to. It is also found that the use of ne for the purpose of negative concord appears to be more variable with infinitives than it is with finite verbs. Whether attachment of ne to a non-finite verb in the absence of a finite one is restricted to bare infinitives is difficult to determine because of the limited evidence relating to other non-finite forms, but there are some indications that use of ne may have been possible with present participles. Finally, some implications that the ne + infinitive pattern has for the formal analysis of Old English are discussed.