Since its foundation in 1959, the Linguistics Association of Great Britain has established itself as one of the three associations for UK linguistics, alongside the much older Philological Society and its own child, the British Association for Applied Linguistics, though the relations among the associations are not always clear and can be somewhat problematic. The LAGB's main characteristic has always been its annual or twice-yearly conferences with a focus on language structure, but it also has its own journal and has taken a lead in promoting linguistics to funding and educational authorities. The paper outlines these events and how the LAGB's internal organisation has evolved to deal with them, and ends with three choices that face the association in its second half-century.

This paper examines early inflectional morphology related to the tense-aspect system of Proto-Indo-European. It will be argued that historical linguistics can shed light on the long-standing debate over the emergence of tense-aspect morphology in language acquisition. The dispute over this issue is well-known; it has been pursued mostly by scholars following various general linguistic approaches, from typology to acquisition, but also by historical linguists and Indo-Europeanists, who have long debated about the precedence of aspect or tense from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. However, so far Indo-Europeanists have rarely confronted their results in a successful way with recent research in other fields such as acquisition or neurolinguistics. The aim of this paper is to put forward evidence from the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system concerning the prominent role of root lexical aspect features in the emergence of grammatical marking of tense in the proto-language. More precisely, by means of a comparison between the residual archaic verbal forms of the injunctive in Vedic Sanskrit and the corresponding augmentless preterites in Homeric Greek, it will be argued that the [±telic] lexical feature of the inherited verbal root is responsible for a non-random distribution of past tense inflected forms in an earlier verbal paradigm.

The absence of I amn't for the first person singular present tense negative form is taken to indicate that there is a gap in the paradigm. Recent accounts take a morphosyntactic approach and phonology is largely ignored. Such accounts typically focus on contemporary forms of Standard English. This paper, in contrast, compares nineteenth-century and contemporary West Yorkshire (WY) aux+n't forms and pursues a largely phonological solution. The paper sets out to demonstrate that WY has never had a *amn't gap and that changes over the past century shed light on the *amn't gap problem. Contemporary WY is known to exhibit a phenomenon called secondary contraction, whereby shouldn't [ʃʊdʔ], for example, may be pronounced [ʃunʔ]. I argue that secondary contraction is responsible for the creation of homophones for amn't and aren't: [aːnt]/[aːt]. I will consider the possibility that certain aux+n't forms have become lexicalised and that this has triggered secondary contraction as a phonological repair strategy. With the analysis of WY data as a backdrop, the paper then pursues the possibility that lexicalisation may have occurred, at a much earlier date, in precursors of Standard British English (SBE). Indeed, it seems plausible that homophony for amn't and aren't may have led to prescription against new realisations of amn't. The paper will show that grammatically amn't has evolved in exactly the same way as other auxn't forms, and it is only commentators who have treated it differently. If this is so, the *amn't gap in SBE is man-made rather than grammatical in nature.

We examine the formal encoding of feature indeterminacy, focussing on case indeterminacy as an exemplar of the phenomenon. Forms that are indeterminately specified for the value of a feature can simultaneously satisfy conflicting requirements on that feature and thus are a challenge to constraint-based formalisms which model the compatibility of information carried by linguistic items by combining or integrating that information. Much previous work in constraint-based formalisms has sought to provide an analysis of feature indeterminacy by departing in some way from ‘vanilla’ assumptions either about feature representations or about how compatibility is checked by integrating information from various sources. In the present contribution we argue instead that a solution to the range of issues posed by feature indeterminacy can be provided in a ‘vanilla’ feature-based approach which is formally simple, does not postulate special structures or objects in the representation of case or other indeterminate features, and requires no special provision for the analysis of coordination. We view the value of an indeterminate feature such as case as a complex and possibly underspecified feature structure. Our approach correctly allows for incremental and monotonic refinement of case requirements in particular contexts. It uses only atomic boolean-valued features and requires no special mechanisms or additional assumptions in the treatment of coordination or other phenomena to handle indeterminacy. Our account covers the behaviour of both indeterminate arguments and indeterminate predicates, that is, predicates placing indeterminate requirements on their arguments.

This paper provides a Distributed Morphology analysis of the paradoxical interaction of the two cases of verbal suppletion in Korean, and argues that the two suppletion types are characterized by two different types of morphological operations. The two roots found with short-form negation and honorification suggest different morphological structures: [[Neg-V] Hon] for al- ‘know’, molu- ‘not.know’, a-si- ‘know-hon’, molu-si- (not *an(i) a-si-) ‘neg know-hon’; and [Neg [V-Hon]] for iss- ‘exist’, eps- ‘not.exist’, kyey-si- ‘exist-hon’, an(i) kyey-si- (not *eps-(u)-si-) ‘neg exist-hon’. Predicate repetition constructions support the [[Neg-V] Hon] structure. In this structure, however, the negative suppletion (analyzed as fusion of negation and the root) is blocked by the honorific suffix structurally more peripheral to the root. C-command is the only requirement for context allomorphy in Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993). Since the [+hon] feature c-commands the root, the root can show honorific suppletive allomorphy in the first cycle with negation intervening between the root and [+hon]. Negation fusion occurs in the second cycle after vocabulary insertion of the root. Fusion, then, should refer to vocabulary items, not abstract features, and will be interleaved with vocabulary insertion. If the output of the root is /kyey/ due to the honorific feature, negative suppletion will not apply and the correct form an(i) kyey-si- will be derived. Therefore, both of the distinct morphological operations for suppletion, i.e., fusion and contextual allomorphy, are necessary. The revised formulation of fusion shows that certain morphological operations follow vocabulary insertion. This derivational approach to the suppletion interaction provides support for separation of phonological and nonphonological features and for late insertion of phonological features.

This paper investigates the question of whether and how ‘Second Occurrence Focus’ (SOF) is realized phonetically in German. The apparent lack of phonetic marking on SOF has raised much discussion on the semantic theory of focus (Partee 1999, Rooth 1992). Some researchers have reported the existence of phonetic marking of SOF in the postnuclear area (Rooth 1996, Beaver et al. 2007). In our experimental study with German sentences, we examined sentences both with prenuclear SOF and with postnuclear SOF, comparing them with their first occurrence focus (FOF) and non-focus counterparts. The results show that the phonetic prominence of focus (higher pitch/longer duration) is realized differently according to the type of focus as well as according to the position of the target expression. We account for these differences by considering several phonetic effects, those that are information-structure-related and those that are phonologically motivated.

The main purpose of this paper is to document a phenomenon of copy adjunct control in Telugu, a Dravidian language, and to provide a derivation of the relevant structures within the framework of the Minimalist Program. Copy adjunct control is a relation of co-identity between the subject in the matrix clause and the subject in an adjunct of the same structure. Both subjects are pronounced. I analyze Copy Control structures as instances of multiple copy spell-out derived via movement, whereby movement is understood as copy-plus-merge. Decisions concerning the pronunciation of copies are prepared for in the syntax, but they are made on the phonological side of the computation.

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.

The study of adjectival diathesis alternations lags behind the study of verbal diathesis and nominalization. This paper aims to diminish the gap by applying to the adjectival domain theoretical tools with proven success elsewhere. We focus on evaluative adjectives, which display a systematic alternation between a basic variant (John was rude) and a derived one (That was rude of John). The alternation brings about a cluster of syntactic and semantic changes – in the semantic type of the predicate, its valency and the mode of argument projection. We argue that the adjectival variants are related by the joint application of two operators: a lexical saturation operator (also seen in verbal passive) and a syntactic reification operator (also seen in nominalization). The analysis straightforwardly extends to similar alternations with Subject- and Object-Experiencer adjectives (proud, irritating). Among its important implications are (i) lexical saturation is not restricted to external arguments (internal ones may also be saturated), and (ii) ‘referential’ (R) roles are not restricted to nominal predicates (adjectives may assign them as well).

A growing body of recent work on the phonetics–phonology interface argues that many phonological patterns refer to psychoacoustic similarity – perceived similarity between sounds based on detailed acoustic information. In particular, two corresponding elements in phonology (e.g. inputs and outputs) are required to be as psychoacoustically similar as possible (Steriade 2001a, b, 2003; Fleischhacker 2005; Kawahara 2006; Zuraw 2007). Using a corpus of Japanese imperfect puns, this paper lends further support to this claim. Our corpus-based study shows that when Japanese speakers compose puns, they require two corresponding consonants to be as similar as possible, and the measure of similarity rests on psychoacoustic information. The result supports the hypothesis that speakers possess a rich knowledge of psychoacoustic similarity and deploy that knowledge in shaping verbal art patterns.

This paper develops a semantic analysis of three constructions: (i) the subject-oriented adverb construction (Wisely, John left early), (ii) the ‘Adj+to Inf’ construction (John was wise to leave early), and (iii) the ‘Adj+of NP’ construction (It was wise of John to leave early), which all involve three semantic components: (i) an individual a (John), (ii) a property P1 that describes a mental/behavioral propensity (wise), and (iii) another property P2 which typically describes an action (leave early). I argue that the three constructions share a meaning along the lines of ‘P2(a), and from this it is possible to infer that P1(a)’, where P1 is forced to receive the transitory interpretation, but they differ as to which component they assert/presuppose. I further demonstrate that this analysis allows us to solve two well-known semantic puzzles concerning these constructions (the ‘entailment puzzle’ and the ‘embeddability puzzle’). The three constructions are highly amenable to the Construction Grammar approach, because their meaning cannot be derived from the intuitive meanings of their constituents and regular semantic rules only. I provide formal analyses of the three constructions in the framework of Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG).

The definite article in many European languages has its origin in a demonstrative or a pronoun. The development into a definite article is a typical case of grammaticalization. In this article I will demonstrate that this kind of grammaticalization, like all kinds of grammaticalization, can be explained as a case of reduction through reanalysis at acquisition. In addition to the prenominal definite article shared with other Germanic languages, the Scandinavian languages also have a postposed definite article. In Old Norse the postnominal definite article is a clitic merged as a head in D, while in its modern descendent Norwegian it is an inflectional suffix checking a grammatical feature in the Infl domain, expressing definiteness within the DP according to general principles of agreement. Thus, so-called ‘double definiteness’ (den gamle hesten ‘the old horse.def’) has become possible as an agreement phenomenon. In Old Norse, the clitic cannot trigger definiteness agreement. This change from a clitic to an inflectional suffix is obviously a case of grammaticalization, but it has wider implications than just the change of morphosyntactic status. ON is shown to have had two projections in the D domain (þau in stóru skip ‘those the large ships’). Later the independent definite article inn was lost and replaced by the demonstrative þann>den. As a result (or cause?) its projection was lost, and the postposed article was left without a free-word counterpart. This, combined with phonological reduction and semantic bleaching, reduced it to an inflectional suffix.

Non-sentential utterances (NSUs), utterances that lack an overt verbal (more generally predicative) constituent, are common in adult speech. This paper presents the results of a corpus study of the emergence of certain classes of NSUs in child language, based primarily on data from the Manchester Corpus from CHILDES. Our principal finding is the late short query effect: the main classes of non-sentential queries (NSQs) are acquired much later than non-sentential answers (NSAs). At a stage when the child has productive use of sentential queries, and has mastered elliptical declaratives and the polar lexemes ‘yes’ and ‘no’, non-sentential questions are virtually absent. This happens despite the fact that such questions are common in the speech of the child's caregivers and that the contexts are ones which should facilitate the production of such NSUs. We argue that these results are intrinsically problematic for analyses of NSUs in terms of a single, generalized mechanism of phonological reduction, as standard in generative grammar. We show how to model this effect within an approach of dialogue-oriented constructionism, wherein NSUs are grammatical words or constructions whose main predicate is a contextual parameter resolved in a manner akin to indexical terms, the relevant aspect of context being the discourse topic. We sketch an explanation for the order of acquisition of NSUs, based on a notion which combines accessibility of contextual parameters and complexity of content construction.

Wh-dependencies are known to be formed rapidly in real-time comprehension. The parser posits the location of gap sites in advance of the bottom-up evidence for missing constituents, and must therefore have a means of deciding when and where to project dependencies. Previous studies have observed that the parser avoids building ungrammatical wh-dependencies, for example, by restricting the search for gap sites from island domains. This paper tests the stronger claim that constraints are not merely respected, but that grammatical knowledge actively prompts the construction of some representations in advance of the input. Three self-paced reading experiments examined patterns of wh-dependency formation in multiple-dependency constructions: obligatory across-the-board (ATB) extraction from coordinated verb phrases, and from optional parasitic gaps in post-verbal adjunct clauses. The key finding is that comprehenders immediately enforce the requirement for extraction from coordinates, and hence actively search for multiple gap sites within a coordinate VP; but they do not search for post-verbal parasitic gaps. This difference cannot be attributed to relative differences in acceptability, as comprehenders rated both of these multiple-gap constructions equally highly, nor can it be explained by general parsing incentives to develop maximal incremental interpretations of partial strings. More plausibly, the difference reflects the deployment of detailed grammatical knowledge in a parser that is motivated to satisfy structural licensing requirements in real time.

This paper argues that the difference between connectivity and anti-connectivity effects in specificational copular sentences is heavily influenced by semantics and information structure. It shows that anti-connectivity effects with respect to binding disappear when the influence of information structure is neutralized, whereas anti-connectivity effects with respect to scope result from the semantics of specificational sentences. These data lead to the conclusion that anti-connectivity effects cannot be used as evidence against a syntax-based approach to specificational sentences and binding, that the analysis of specificational sentences should include both a syntactic and a semantic device, and that the syntactic analysis of specificational sentences should rely crucially on their information structure. I present and adopt Heycock & Kroch's (2002) analysis for specificational sentences, in which connectivity effects result from the assembling of ground and focus. The fact that connectivity effects are also exhibited by verb–object–subject word order in French and Spanish, which is marked for the ground-focus partition, is presented as an important piece of independent evidence in favor of this analysis.

Most familiar syntactic frameworks recognize the category ‘phrase’, and are built around phrase structure relationships. However, the Word Grammar dependency model does not acknowledge the category ‘phrase’ as a primitive in the grammar; instead, all relationships are word-based, with phrases having no syntactic status. Here, I investigate the theoretical validity of the notion ‘phrase’ by examining the phenomenon in Welsh known as syntactic soft mutation, contrasting a phrase-based account with a dependency account. I conclude that an empirically adequate analysis of syntactic soft mutation must make reference to phrases as a category, thus ruling out the dependency account. A further theoretical question concerns the role played in the grammar by syntactically present but phonetically unrealized elements, including empty categories such as wh-traces and unrealized material in ellipsis. Syntactic soft mutation proves an interesting testing ground in these contexts, but the data again fail to support the dependency account. The conclusion is that a phrase-based account of the mutation is better motivated and empirically more accurate than the alternative dependency account.

This paper examines the relationship between headedness and language processing and considers two strategies that potentially ease language comprehension and production. Both strategies allow a language to minimize the number of arguments in a given clause, either by reducing the number of overtly expressed arguments or by reducing the number of structurally required arguments. The first strategy consists of minimizing the number of overtly expressed arguments by using more pro-drop for two-place predicates (Pro-drop bias). According to the second strategy, a language gives preference to one-place predicates over two-place predicates, thus minimizing the number of structural arguments (Intransitive bias). In order to investigate these strategies, we conducted a series of comparative corpus studies of SVO and SOV languages. Study 1 examined written texts of various genres and children's utterances in English and Japanese, while Study 2 examined narrative stories in English, Spanish, Japanese, and Turkish. The results for these studies showed that pro-drop was uniformly more common with two-place predicates than with one-place predicates, regardless of the OV/VO distinction. Thus the Pro-drop bias emerges as a universal economy principle for making utterances shorter. On the other hand, SOV languages showed a much stronger Intransitive bias than SVO languages. This finding suggests that SOV word order with all the constituents explicitly expressed is potentially harder to process; the dominance of one-place predicates is therefore a compensatory strategy in order to reduce the number of preverbal arguments. The overall pattern of results suggests that human languages utilize both general (Pro-drop bias) and headedness-order-specific (Intransitive bias) strategies to facilitate processing. The results on headedness-order-specific strategies are consistent with other researchers' findings on differential processing in head-final and non-head-final languages, for example, Yamashita & Chang's (2001) ‘long-before-short’ parameterization.