Visser (1973:1968) gives a long list of verbs “more or less incompatible” with the progressive that have this in common: in their general sense

Parmi les analyses récentes dont le but est de rendre compte de la distribution des lexèmes à polarité négative (LPN) en anglais, comme par exemple les faits contrastifs concernant any en (1a) vs (1b), deux traitements radicalement opposés retiennent l’attention du linguiste.

1. 1. a. Paul didn’t catch any fish today.

   2. b. *Paul caught any fish today.

Babine, which has also been known as Northern Carrier, has two major dialects, Lake Babine (LB) spoken in Babine Lake and River Babine (RB) spoken in Bulkley River in northwestern British Columbia. The speakers of the latter in Moricetown and Hagwilgate prefer to call their language [wətsowət’en]. The recognition of Babine as a language distinct from Carrier is based on the work of Hildebrandt and Story (1974), Kari (1975), and Story (1984). In claiming Babine as a distinct language, rather than a Carrier dialect, Story (1984:1) cites “the Babine vowel shift”. She presents an extensive discussion of the historical process of vowel shift conditioned by two categories of syllable-initial consonants, which she calls F(ortis)-Mutation and L(enis)-Mutation.

Numerous interesting problems in the phonology of different dialects of Chinese tend to be buried in Chinese-language sources, or have not yet gained the attention of phonologists in general. One such case is the final glottal stop in modern Fuzhou, with respect to its behaviour synchronically and its historical origins. The final glottal stop came from two earlier sources, *-k and *-?. While *-k has completely merged with *-? in stressed syllables, evidences of the earlier contrast can still be found in the modern dialect — in how it behaves in more weakly stressed syllables in tone sandhi spans, and in its effect on adjacent consonants. It is proposed here that the continued relevance of the former phonological contrast can be accounted for by treating the final glottal stop from *-k as a prelinked glottal stop, and the one from *-? as a floating segment within the autosegmental approach. In this paper I will trace the history of these two codas, as well as address the implications that the differences in representation have with respect to subsequent changes in the language. I will conclude with a discussion of other languages for which a floating glottal stop solution has been offered.

The experiment reported on here investigating the syllabic attachment of post-vocalic nasals and l grew out of an earlier experiment which compared the post-vocalic liquids r and l (Laubstein 1989). Using the error elicitation technique described in Motley et al (1983), induced errors involving Vr and Vl sequences were compared. The two sequences behaved quite differently, suggesting different syllabic attachments for the two liquids. Vowel-r sequences consistently interacted with single vowels or vowel glide sequences and such sequences never split up, supporting the hypothesis (based on naturally occurring errors) that vowel-r sequences belong to a uni-positional peak constituent and supporting Kahn’s argument that English r, like w and y, is a glide (Kahn 1976). Vowel-l sequences, on the other hand, did split apart; errors involved the l alone or the vowel alone, significantly more often than they involved the r or V alone from Vr sequences (Wilcoxon p <.0001). This supported the hypothesis that the r and l belonged to different constituents. The relative frequency of errors is commonly assumed to reflect constituency. See, for instance, Stemberger and Treiman’s (1986) arguments regarding different positions in the onset. Nevertheless, such sequences also acted as single units, and in this respect behaved like vowel-r sequences. In addition, when such sequences were involved as a unit they interacted with single vowels or vowel glide sequences, suggesting that at some level of analysis they belonged to the same constituents as vowels. Speech errors which involve interactions between two items, or the substitution of one item for another, are in general structure-preserving. They involve units of the same constituent type at some level of analysis; for instance, noun phrase with noun phrase, preposition with preposition, verb with verb, and at the sub-lexical level, syllabic constituent type a with syllabic constituent type a (Laubstein 1987).

Chomsky (1981, 1986b) formulates the Theta Criterion so that it prohibits non-argument NPs such as the expletives it and there from occurring in theta-marked positions. One consequence of this formulation is that raising-to-object analyses for (1) are disallowed because they would permit an expletive to occupy an object position, a position which is theta-marked by the verb:

(1)

1. John believes there to be a woman outside.

The postulation of diachronic universals derives from certain conclusions reached in the investigation of synchronic universals, i.e., that there are natural (universal) phonological subsystems in languages or dialects, and that there are natural (universal) structural relationships between the elements in these subsystems. In essence, a hypothesis about a particular diachronic universal is a claim that a shared natural state in various languages or dialects is the product of the same diachronic process (a sound change, series of linked sound changes, etc.). A counterproposal to this hypothesis would specify that there are multiple diachronic routes which can link two parallel states in the history of two or more innovating languages or dialects. If the latter view is correct, and I believe that it is, then the theory of diachronic universals will require refinement if it is to retain theoretical value.

This paper examines cognate object (CO) constructions such as those in (1).

1. 1. a. Dorothea smiled a smile.

   2. b. Dorothea smiled a wicked smile.

   3. c. Dorothea has smiled all her smiles.

The central question which is raised by such constructions regards the status of the CO with respect to both its syntax and its semantics. That this question is not a new one, nor one confined to theoretical linguistics is seen in Harper’s English Grammar where we read: “Some authorities . . . contend that cognate verbs — verbs which are followed by objects that repeat their meaning — are intransitive. However the verbs in such expressions as He slept a peaceful sleep and He lived a useful life are by the majority of grammarians regarded as transitive verbs” (Opdycke 1941:106).

Le moyen français (MF) est une langue à sujet nul qui permet les sujets postverbaux et dont le verbe occupe généralement la seconde position. N’importe quel constituant peut occuper la première position de la phrase, y compris le sujet. Le sujet nul et le sujet postverbal sont habituellement le fait des langues romanes. L’effet du verbe second, “l’effet V2”, est caractéristique des langues germaniques. Une question longuement débattue par la tradition philologique (Foulet 1928; Herman 1954; Hilty 1968; Kuen 1957) est celle de l’influence des langues germaniques sur l’évolution du francais. Fidèles en ce sens à cette tradition, mais dans le cadre de la grammaire générative, Benincà (1984) puis Adams (1987) et Vance (1987) ont appliqué l’analyse proposée par Thiersch (1978) pour l’allemand à l’ancien français (AF) en assumant deux règles de mouvement: antéposition du verbe tensé et topicalisation de n’importe quel adverbe ou NP en position initiale. Le caractère obligatoire de la règle de topicalisation V2 est mis en doute par l’existence de phrases déclaratives à verbe initial en ancien et en moyen français. En effet, on en trouve de la Chanson de Roland (XIIe siècle) jusqu’à Rabelais et Montaigne (XVIe siècle) tant en phrases matrices qu’en phrases subordonnées.

This paper offers an account of the different behaviour of prenorninal constituents such as his and su in the examples in (1) which are associated with one of the thematic roles assigned by the nouns picture and foto respectively. I argue that the prenominal element su is base-generated as a clitic adjoined to a nominal head in Spanish, whereas his in English attains its prenominal position via NP-movement to a nominal specifier.