The purpose of this paper is to provide a plausibility argument for a new way of thinking about intra-personal morphosyntactic variation. The idea is embedded within the framework of the Minimalist Program, and makes use of notions of feature interpretability and feature checking. Specifically, I argue that underspecification of uninterpretable features in a matching relation with interpretable features allows us to model categoricality and variability within a single system. Unlike many current approaches to intra-personal variation (which involve multiple grammars or building stochastic weightings into the grammar itself), the system attempts to predict (rather than capture) frequencies of variants. It does this by combining an evaluation metric for the acquisition of uninterpretable features with the standard properties of features and syntactic operations in the Minimalist framework. The argument is made through a case study of was/were variation in a Scottish dialect.

This paper examines the unusual case and word order behavior of objects of infinitives in Lithuanian. In addition to lexically determined case idiosyncrasy, Lithuanian exhibits syntactically determined case idiosyncrasy: with infinitives in three distinct constructions, case possibilities other than accusative obtain. These cases (dative, genitive, and nominative) depend on the general clause structure rather than on the particular infinitive. Moreover, unlike ordinary direct objects, these objects appear in a position preceding rather than following the verb. It is argued that they move to this position in order potentially to be accessible for Case assignment by some higher Case-assigning head. In this way we unify the two superficially unrelated properties of non-canonical word order and Case. This movement, however, is not feature-driven in the sense of standard minimalist Case-licensing mechanisms. We characterize it as ‘agnostic’ in that it applies to an object with unvalued Case features, if that object reaches a point in the derivation where it has no recourse but to move because failure to do so would be fatal.

Reduplication patterns in Itelmen (Chukotko-Kamchatkan) present a prima facie challenge to the view that association in partial reduplication is always Edge-In (Yip 1988, McCarthy & Prince 1996). Closer investigation suggests that Itelmen reduplication may in fact be total copying, masked by an apocope rule. This solution is not obvious, however, as the apocope rule must be limited to ‘core’ or ‘native’ vocabulary. While Russian loans are reasonably transparent, the analysis requires making a distinction between cognates and loans from related Koryak, a distinction speakers are not consciously aware of. Positing that this distinction is part of the synchronic phonology provides a solution to other apparently unrelated phonological puzzles in the language. In addition to removing an apparent counter-example to universal Edge-In association, the proposals made here may also provide a small argument for the lexical stratification model of loanword phonology over a purely representational alternative.

We argue that there is a diachronic process, distinct from phonological erosion, that results in the loss of inflectional morphology that is trapped when a clitic attaches to a host, becoming an affix. This is supported with attested examples from Mainland Scandinavian, Georgian, Spanish, and Greek, as well as shallow, well-accepted reconstructions from Slavic and Georgian. It is further supported by new reconstructions from Zoque (Mixe-Zoquean) and Andi (Northeast Caucasian). For example, in Old Norse the postposed article is a clitic, and there is a case ending between the noun stem and the article: hest-s=in-s ‘the horse (gen)’. The first s is trapped morphology, and it is subsequently lost: hest-en-s. Similarly, in pre-Georgian, the postposed article traps the ergative case marker, *-n: *k'ac-n=ma-n ‘the man (erg)’; it is subsequently lost: k'ac-man. We argue that the loss of trapped morphology is not sound change or another phonological process, but a morphological process.

This paper examines two contrasting perspectives on morphological analysis, and considers inflectional patterns that bear on the choice between these alternatives. On what is termed an ABSTRACTIVE perspective, surface word forms are regarded as basic morphotactic units of a grammatical system, with roots, stems and exponents treated as abstractions over a lexicon of word forms. This traditional standpoint is contrasted with the more CONSTRUCTIVE perspective of post-Bloomfieldian models, in which surface word forms are ‘built’ from sub-word units. Part of the interest of this contrast is that it cuts across conventional divisions of morphological models. Thus, realization-based models are morphosyntactically ‘word-based’ in the sense that they regard words as the minimal meaningful units of a grammatical system. Yet morphotactically, these models tend to adopt a constructive ‘root-based’ or ‘stem-based’ perspective. An examination of some form-class patterns in Saami, Estonian and Georgian highlights advantages of an abstractive model, and suggests that these advantages derive from the fact that sets of words often predict other word forms and determine a morphotactic analysis of their parts, whereas sets of sub-word units are of limited predictive value and typically do not provide enough information to recover word forms.

This paper first provides an overview of the various senses in which the terms ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ have been used in 20th-century linguistics. Twelve different senses, related only by family resemblances, are distinguished, grouped into four larger classes: markedness as complexity, as difficulty, as abnormality, and as a multidimensional correlation. In the second part of the paper, it is argued that the term ‘markedness’ is superfluous, because some of the concepts that it denotes are not helpful, and others are better expressed by more straightforward, less ambiguous terms. In a great many cases, frequency asymmetries can be shown to lead to a direct explanation of observed structural asymmetries, and in other cases additional concrete, substantive factors such as phonetic difficulty and pragmatic inferences can replace reference to an abstract notion of ‘markedness’.

This paper is a critique of two foundational assumptions of generative work culminating in the Minimalist Program: the assumption that, as a matter of conceptual necessity, language has a ‘double-interface property’ and the related assumption that phonology has a realizational function with respect to syntax-semantics. The issues are broached through a critique of Holmberg's (2000) analysis of Stylistic Fronting in Icelandic. We show that, although empirically motivated, and although based on the double-interface assumption, this analysis is incompatible with that assumption and with the notion of (phonological) realization. Independently of Stylistic Fronting, we argue that the double-interface assumption is a problematic legacy of Saussure's conception of the linguistic sign and that, conceptually, it is neither explanatory nor necessary. The Representational Hypothesis (e.g. Burton-Roberts 2000) develops a Peircian conception of the relation between sound and meaning that breaks with the Saussurian tradition, though in a way consistent with minimalist goals. Other superficially similar approaches (Lexeme–Morpheme Base Morphology, Distributed Morphology, Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture) are discussed; it is argued that they, too, perpetuate aspects of Saussurian thought.

In the present paper we provide an account of VSO in Greek and its (relative) absence in Italian, despite the fact that both languages allow for postverbal subjects. We argue that this parametric difference reduces to different lexicalisation options regarding the D-system of the two grammars. We assume that the clause structure divides into three basic domains (V, T, and C), and that nominal (clitic) positions are available in each of these domains, which, as we argue, can be lexicalised not only by clitics but also by full DPs. On this basis, we argue that the subject and object DP in Greek can appear in the same domain (V), as they spell out different features depending on their grammatical function, while this is not so in Italian, given that DPs spell out the same set of features irrespective of their grammatical function. This basic difference is responsible for the presence of VSO in Greek but not in Italian. We also consider the implications of our approach for the interpretation of subjects and arguments in general.

It is widely accepted that the semantic content of a lexical entry determines to a large extent its syntactic subcategorization or other contexts of occurrence. However, clarifying the precise extent to which this hypothesis holds has proven difficult and on occasion controversial. To maintain this hypothesis, scholars have in many difficult cases introduced syntactic diacritics in their lexical semantic representations, thereby running the risk of rendering it vacuous. Our answer to this challenge is two-fold. First, on the substantive side, we argue that the problem lies in the assumption that the semantic content of lexical entries consists of a recursive predicate-argument structure. In contrast, we claim that the semantic content of lexical entries can consist of a set of such structures, thus eschewing semantically unmotivated predicates that merely ensure the correct semantic geometry. Second, on the structural side, we suggest that the semantic content of words can idiosyncratically select one of those predicate-argument structures for the purposes of direct grammatical function assignment. We show that this hypothesis, which builds on independently motivated proposals regarding the form of underspecified natural language semantic representations, provides a clean account of linking phenomena related to several classes of predicators: verbs whose denotata require the presence of an instrument, the semantic role of French ‘adjunct’ clitics, commercial event verbs, the spray/load alternations, and lexical subordination constructions.

This study investigates how the parser employs thematic and contextual information in resolving temporary ambiguities during sentence processing. We report results from a sentence-completion task and from a self-paced reading experiment with native speakers of Greek examining two constructions under different referential context conditions: relative clauses (RCs) preceded by complex noun phrases with genitives, [NP1+NP2Gen], and RCs preceded by complex noun phrases containing prepositional phrases, [NP1+PP[P NP2]]. We found different attachment preferences for these two constructions, a high (NP1) preference for RCs with genitive antecedents and a low (NP2) preference for RCs with PP antecedents. Moreover, referential context information was found to modulate RC attachment differently in the two experimental tasks. We interpret these findings from the perspective of modular theories of sentence processing and argue that on-line ambiguity resolution relies primarily on grammatical and lexical-thematic information, and makes use of referential context information only as a secondary resource.

Metaphorical expressions involving proper names have been discussed only sporadically. This paper demonstrates that there are in fact interesting things to be said about such metaphors, and makes two key points, one general and one specific. The general point is that their behavior accords more with the class-inclusion model of metaphor than the correspondence model. Having established this, I make the more specific point that there are cultural dimensions to these metaphors that pose particular problems for the kind of correspondence model proposed by Lakoff and his associates.

This study investigates whether children learning Irish as a first language show a preference for one or other of the two mechanisms for relative clause formation used in the adult language (movement and binding), and what details of the grammar of Irish relative clauses children are sensitive to. Our results suggest that Irish-speaking children have acquired both a movement and a binding mechanism for relativization by age five, and that they additionally have a non-movement mechanism for forming subject relatives, one that is not licensed in adult Irish. The data is discussed in the context of other studies of relativization in child language, cross-linguistic evidence and the computation of binding structures in language production and processing.

For the analysis of the noun phrase, the treatment which currently prevails in generative grammar is the one in which the head of the noun phrase is identified with the determiner, rather than with the noun. This D(et)P treatment has the advantage of providing a uniform account of all syntactic categories, both the substantive and the functional ones, and it provides a natural way to capture the co-occurrence restrictions between nouns and determiners, but it also faces a number of empirical problems. To solve them I propose an analysis in which the head of the noun phrase is identified with the noun, but in which the advantages of the DP treatment are incorporated as much as possible. This is done in two steps. First, I argue that the requirement (or the desirability) of a uniform treatment of all syntactic categories does not by itself favour the DP treatment, since there is no empirical evidence for the postulation of a separate syntactic category for the determiners. The argumentation is mainly based on an analysis of NP-internal agreement data and leads to the conclusion that the class of determiners is syntactically heterogeneous: there are the adjectival determiners, which are subject to morpho-syntactic agreement, and (pro)nominal ones, which are exempt from this agreement. Second, I dissociate the roles of head and selector. All prenominals, both the specifying and the modifying ones, are treated as functors which select a nominal head, rather than as heads which select a nominal complement. This functor treatment accounts in a natural and straightforward way for both morpho-syntactic agreement and semantic types of agreement. The language which is used for exemplification is Dutch, but at various points comparisons are made with German and English.

I'd like to start this brief response to Asudeh & Toivonen's 2006 review article ‘Symptomatic imperfections’ (henceforth SI) with a word of thanks for the careful job they've done and generally collegial manner in which they've done it. They make many good points about Adger (2000; Core syntax – henceforth CS) which will help a great deal in improving the book for any future edition. Because of this, I don't want to dwell on any minor quibbles I have about their comments. Instead, I'd like to focus on some broader conclusions they draw about the theoretical devices used in CS and the perspective taken there. My remarks will address mainly SI's concerns about the feature theory I outlined in CS, and the question of movement.

Wichmann (2005) discusses the power-law distribution n=ar−b as a description of the relationship between the number of languages n in a language family, and the rank r of that family in a list ordered by decreasing n. Two datasets are used by Wichmann, one from Ethnologue (Grimes 2000), which lists 130 language families, and one from Ruhlen (1987), listing 21 families. We have reanalysed these data and find that the method of fitting a power-law used in the paper is not optimal because it does not allow for a sensible maximum value for the family size n.

David Adger raises some interesting issues and makes several valuable points in his ‘Remarks on Minimalist feature theory and Move’ (henceforth MFTM), a response to our review article ‘Symptomatic imperfections’ (henceforth SI) in this journal (Asudeh & Toivonen 2006), which was in part a review of his Core syntax (Adger 2003). In this response, we address some of the points in MFTM. We would also like to set the record straight about some points in SI which we feel have been misrepresented. In several instances, MFTM argues against claims that were not made in SI. Whatever the independent merit of these arguments, we do not wish to defend viewpoints we did not propose in the first place.

In a recent review article in this journal, Everett (2005) finds our book Anderson & Lightfoot (2002) (as well as Givón 2002) seriously lacking and unpersuasive in the case it attempts to make for the importance of an understanding of the human language faculty as an aspect of our species' biology. Negative reviews are of course a feature of academic life, but Everett's piece exhibits enough misconceptions and misrepresentations, both of our work and of the nature of biology, to warrant a response.

‘Sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand.’

Cool Hand Luke