This paper examines the relationship between the use of names and other words in address and in reference: how does the way that speaker A addresses B differ from the way that A refers to B, and what are the factors affecting this difference? The study, based on observation and interviews, attempts both to solve a problem in pragmatics and to help historical linguists and others who need to know the extent to which it may be justified to extrapolate from referential to address usage and vice versa.

This paper argues that the word order possibilities of a language are partly determined by the parts-of-speech system of that language. In languages in which lexical items are specialized for certain functionally defined syntactic slots (e.g. the modifier slot within a noun phrase), the identifiability of these slots is ensured by the nature of the lexical items (e.g. adjectives) themselves. As a result, word order possibilities are relatively unrestricted in these languages. In languages in which lexical items are not specialized for certain syntactic slots, in that these items combine the functions of two or more of the traditional word classes, other strategies have to be invoked to enhance identifiability. In these languages word order constraints are used to make syntactic slots identifiable on the basis of their position within the clause or phrase. Hence the word order possibilities are rather restricted in these languages. Counterexamples to the latter claim all involve cases in which identifiability is ensured by morphological rather than syntactic means. This shows that there is a balanced trade-off between the syntactic, morphological, and lexical structure of a language.

A Duke who has not been satisfactorily identified with any historical figure is lampooned in a traditional rhyme (believed to have been directed originally at the King of France) as follows:

The Grand Old Duke of York

He had ten thousand men

He marched them up a great high hill

And he marched them down again.

The implication is that this was incompetent and self-defeating activity on his part. Linguists very frequently seem to give evidence of a tacitly held belief that there is similarly something inept and risible about a linguistic analysis which determines that certain structures are assigned a derivation of the general form A→B→A, that is a derivation in which an underlying representation (or some nonultimate remote representation) is mapped on to an intermediate form distinct from it, and then on to a surface (or other superficial) representation which is identical with the earlier stage.

This paper argues that the term ‘passive’ has been systematically misapplied to a class of impersonal constructions that suppress the realization of a syntactic subject. The reclassification of these constructions highlights a typological contrast between two types of verbal diathesis and clarifies the status of putative ‘passives of unaccusatives’ and ‘transitive passives’ in Balto-Finnic and Balto-Slavic. Impersonal verb forms differ from passives in two key respects: they are insensitive to the argument structure of a verb and can be formed from unergatives or unaccusatives, and they may retain direct objects. As with other subjectless forms of personal verbs, there is a strong tendency to interpret the suppressed subject of an impersonal as an indefinite human agent. Hence impersonalization is often felicitous only for verbs that select human subjects.

This paper offers a variationist critique of aspects of phonological theory and method, focusing on advances in descriptive methods and highlighting the problems that need to be addressed in explaining phonological variation. On the one hand, socially situated language samples which have been systematically collected and analysed constitute a legitimate – indeed often vital – source of evidence to be utilised by linguists for assessing and refining theoretical models. On the other hand, variationists cannot operate in isolation from theoretical concerns, and can benefit from an evaluation of the competing theoretical frameworks available to them.

The paper begins with a brief review of the philosophical foundations underlying the tension between ‘external’ and ‘internal’ methodology. We then focus on a particular phonological example – glottalisation in English. We demonstrate that phonological models of this can be complemented by systematic and accountable data collection and analysis of the kind associated with sociolinguistics. It is suggested that the patterns of variation produced by speakers are significantly more complex than has been indicated in the phonological literature. Consequently, these approaches can be usefully expanded and extended as theoretical models. We discuss some desiderata for extending the range of phonological models, focusing chiefly on the need to account for variability and change in language.

How do people answer polar questions? In this fourteen-language study of answers to questions in conversation, we compare the two main strategies; first, interjection-type answers such as uh-huh (or equivalents yes, mm, head nods, etc.), and second, repetition-type answers that repeat some or all of the question. We find that all languages offer both options, but that there is a strong asymmetry in their frequency of use, with a global preference for interjection-type answers. We propose that this preference is motivated by the fact that the two options are not equivalent in meaning. We argue that interjection-type answers are intrinsically suited to be the pragmatically unmarked, and thus more frequent, strategy for confirming polar questions, regardless of the language spoken. Our analysis is based on the semantic-pragmatic profile of the interjection-type and repetition-type answer strategies, in the context of certain asymmetries inherent to the dialogic speech act structure of question–answer sequences, including sequential agency and thematic agency. This allows us to see possible explanations for the outlier distributions found in ǂĀkhoe Haiǁom and Tzeltal.

Serbo-Croatian (SC) is a language without articles, probably the only category of speech that has uncontroversially and crosslinguistically been argued to occupy the head of the Determiner Phrase (DP). This paper argues that even SC, a language without articles, projects a DP on top of NPs in argument positions. The strongest evidence comes from noun/pronoun asymmetries, where the pronouns precede, and nouns follow, certain intensifying adjectives. Assuming that these adjectives occupy a fixed syntactic position, the conclusion must be that pronouns occupy a structurally higher position than nouns. Since the evidence of such asymmetries is extremely sparse in the data, the children presumably cannot rely on them to conclude that there is a DP in SC. Since there are also no articles in SC, children have virtually no evidence of the existence of a DP. It must be then that the projection of DPs is a universal property, independent of the presence of the lexical item which solely occupies the head of the projection. Morphological properties of SC pronouns and adjectives actually support the existence of more than just one functional projection in the noun phrase in SC. The paper derives Greenberg's universal 43, which states that pronouns are more likely to have (gender) morphology than nouns, by arguing that pronouns move (overtly) through more functional projections than nouns, and ultimately land in D.

This paper aims to demonstrate that there is no adequate treatment of adjectives in NP in English, and attempts to remedy this. The central problem is to account for the syntactic and semantic differences between prenominal and postnominal adjectival constructions as in (i)–(iv):

(i) the navigable river

(ii) the rivers navigable

(iii) *the navigable by boat rivers

(iv) the rivers navigable by boat

Existing treatments are reviewed, and a novel analysis proposed whereby the structures in (ii) and (iv) are normal syntactic N-AP structures, but prenominally, adjectives form what we call ‘small’ syntactic constructions (X° constructions, with X° daughters) which have some properties in common with lexical/morphological constructions. If the analysis is right, it poses a serious challenge to the view that there is a strict separation of lexical and syntactic aspects of grammar: grammatical theory should recognize a kind of construction which is neither fully syntactic nor fully lexical, but has properties of both.

It has been widely assumed that the preverbal particles of Irish are complementizers. Given the distribution of the particle aL, this assumption provides support for two central claims about WH-movement – that its application is successive-cyclic, and that it is driven by a morphosyntactic feature of the complementizer. However, the claim that aL is a complementizer also has been widely challenged. This paper aims to (re)confirm the original analysis. It argues that the sceptical literature (i) underestimates the morphosyntactic heterogeneity of Irish complementizers, and (ii) restricts attention to an overly narrow subset of constructions in which aL appears.

A cognitive pragmatic approach is taken to some long-standing problem cases of negation, the so-called presupposition denial cases. It is argued that a full account of the processes and levels of representation involved in their interpretation typically requires the sequential pragmatic derivation of two different propositions expressed. The first is one in which the presupposition is preserved and, following the rejection of this, the second involves the echoic (metalinguistic) use of material falling in the scope of the negation. The semantic base for these processes is the standard anti-presuppositionalist wide-scope negation. A different view, developed by Burton-Roberts (1989a, b), takes presupposition to be a semantic relation encoded in natural language and so argues for a negation operator that does not cancel presuppositions. This view is shown to be flawed, in that it makes the false prediction that presupposition denial cases are semantic contradictions and it is based on too narrow a view of the role of pragmatic inferencing.

One of the most promising new developments of recent research into theoretical syntax within the model of Government and Binding (GB) as presented in Chomsky (1981) and (1982) has been the new importance given to the study of languages other than English. This has stimulated a great deal of work into a variety of languages (see, for example, Rizzi, 1982; Borer, 1983; Bouchard, 1984; Huang, 1984 and others). It has also been welcomed by linguists outside the TG tradition. Thus, Comrie, (1984:155) expresses his delight that ‘Chomsky (1981) makes clear that generative grammarians have come to realize that an adequate study of syntax within universal grammar requires the study of languages of different types. Chomsky's main concern has always been to formulate a theory that would achieve ‘explanatory adequacy’ by providing a restrictive set of principles which could characterize universally the notion ‘natural language’. However, detailed and in-depth analyses of various languages have revealed that in order to achieve ‘descriptive adequacy’ the theory has to allow for cross-linguistic differences, or ‘parametric variation’. The concept of parametric variation weakens some-what the restrictiveness of the universal grammar (UG) hypothesis and even more so its purported innateness, since the values for the parameters must be arrived at by the child through induction from empirical evidence. Nevertheless, explanatory adequacy may still be attained if the number of parameters is very small and each parameter has few values.

This paper aims to re-assess the notion DISCOURSE MARKER as it is applied to a subset of so-called apposition markers. It is argued that the classification of markers of reformulation as discourse markers alongside expressions like but and so is incoherent from a semantic point of view, since this ignores the distinction between PROCEDURAL and CONCEPTUAL meaning. Moreover, this classification is based on an account of discourse which is not only based on an insufficiently general account of context, but which is also difficult to maintain in the light of the use of these expressions in parenthetical nominal appositions. An alternative account is developed in the framework of Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory building on recent work on the meaning of parentheticals and sentence adverbials.

The goal of this article is twofold. First, I explore the hypothesis that a number of regularities in the distribution of the two types of inchoative constructions with verbs of change of state in French, the superficially intransitive construction and the reflexive construction (illustrated in (1)–(3)), can be captured by an analysis whereby monovalent verbs of change of state may project the Patient argument to the subject or to the object position. When the Patient argument is projected to the subject position (as in (1a) and (3a)), the construction is unergative. When it is projected to the object position, the construction is unaccusative (as in (1b)–(3b)). Verbs of change of state in French diner as to whether they may enter an intransitive inchoative construction (1), a reflexive inchoative construction (2) or both (3).

This paper investigates the intonational phrasing of three types of parenthetical insertions – non-restrictive relative clauses (NRRCs), full sentences, and comment clauses (CCs) – in actual spoken language. It draws on a large set of data from a corpus of spoken British English. Its aim is twofold: first, it evaluates the correctness of previous claims about the intonational phrasing of parentheticals, specifically the assumption that parentheticals are phrased in a separate intonation domain; second, it discusses the implications of the intonational phrasing of parentheticals for prosodic theory. The results of the data analysis are as follows. First, the longer types of interpolations but not CCs are by default phrased separately. Second, both the temporal and the tonal structure of the host may be affected by the parenthetical. Third, CCs lend themselves more readily to the restructuring of intonational phrases such that they are phrased in one domain together with material from the host. Fourth, the prosodic results cannot be explained in syntactic accounts which do not allow for a syntactic relation between parenthetical and host. Fifth, the interface constraints on intonational phrasing apply to parentheticals. Sixth, the intonational phrasing of parentheticals supports the assumption of a post-syntactic, phonological component of the grammar at which restructuring applies.

This paper claims that a wide variety of grammatical coding asymmetries can be explained as adaptations to the language users’ needs, in terms of frequency of use, predictability and coding efficiency. I claim that all grammatical oppositions involving a minimal meaning difference and a significant frequency difference are reflected in a universal coding asymmetry, i.e. a cross-linguistic pattern in which the less frequent member of the opposition gets special coding, unless the coding is uniformly explicit or uniformly zero. I give 25 examples of pairs of construction types, from a substantial range of grammatical domains. For some of them, the existing evidence from the world’s languages and from corpus counts is already strong, while for others, I know of no counterevidence and I make readily testable claims. I also discuss how the functional-adaptive forces operate in language change, and I discuss a number of possible alternative explanations.

It is an unquestioned assumption of all recent discussions of semantic presupposition that a presuppositional semantics admitting of truth-value gaps depends upon and therefore implies a semantic ambiguity of natural language negation (SAN). Such theories have been criticized and defended on that basis. This essay invites the reader to contemplate the idea that this picture of things is fundamentally mistaken.

Chomsky (1981: 188, 220; 1986a: 166) formulates the Binding Theory essentially as in (1).

(1) (A) An anaphor must be locally bound

(B) A pronoun must not be locally bound

(C) An R-expression must not be bound

The notion ‘bound’ is defined as ‘c-commanded by a co-referential element’. As for the notion ‘locally’, that of Chomsky (1986a) differs somewhat from that of Chomsky (1981), and much recent literature addresses the issue, especially in connection with the phenomenon of ‘Long Distance Anaphora’. (For relevant discussion see Burzio (1989c and references therein) and also Levinson, this volume.) For most of our purposes, it will be sufficient to assume Chomsky's (1981: 188) ‘within its [i.e. the anaphor's/pronoun‘s] governing category’, or even the formally simpler (though empirically less adequate) ‘within the same minimal clause’. The empirical effects of the Binding Theory in (1) can then be illustrated as in (2a, b, c) – instances of local binding, non-local binding, and no binding respectively. In each case the connecting line expresses intended co-reference, much as co-indexation in later examples. Each ungrammatical case is accounted for by the principle indicated in parentheses.