This paper provides a syntactic and semantic analysis of sentences such as those in (1).

1. (1) a. Mary has to leave early.

2. b. I have a paper to write/a dress to wear.

3. c. Mary has only/but to call, and Fred comes running.

4. d. We have yet to figure out why the car won’t start.

In recent literature on the decomposition of INFL (Pollock 1989), it has been proposed that the features of agreement morphology (henceforth the Ф features), and the features of Tense, each head a separate projection, AGR and T, respectively. There are languages which do not exhibit agreement in Ф features. This raises the question as to whether these languages have a functional category AGR. Kornfilt (1989), for example, shows that in contrast to Modern Turkish, Old Turkish does not exhibit agreement phenomena in person and number. She proposes that the difference between the two grammars be expressed in terms of the presence of AGR in the former and the absence of this projection in the latter. Similarly, on the basis of the fact that Haitian Creole lacks agreement in person and number, Ritter (1991b) suggests that Haitian Creole lacks the functional category AGR. In this paper, I demonstrate that there is ample motivation for positing AGR as a syntactic category in Haitian and in Fon.

In this paper, we will investigate certain phenomena which appear sensitive to particular conditions of adjacency and provide an explanation of these conditions in terms of syntactic structure and principles defined over such structure. Two interesting results which follow from such an explanation are: (i) the Case Filter given in (1) below, which stipulates that phonetically realized NPs must receive Case, may be subsumed under the Empty Category Principle, and (ii) the claim that only Case-marked traces are visible at PF (which has been suggested as an explanation of wanna contraction facts) can be given a structural account.

The morphological shape of a noun in Berber is determined by the syntactic context in which it appears. The alternation is between what has come to be known as the Construct State and the Free State. Since the alternation is syntactically determined, it has been suggested that the State phenomenon may be a form of case (cf. Prasse 1974; Chaker 1983; Bader and Kenstowicz 1984; Ouhalla 1988). But the link between Case and State has not been established in a conclusive manner. One reason why the nature of the Construct State has remained a puzzling aspect of Berber is that the contexts in which the Construct State forms appear and those where the Free State forms appear do not seem to constitute natural classes. For instance, most prepositions take a Construct State complement, but some take Free State forms. The subject of a verb in the VSO order is in the Construct but a left dislocated subject is not. The object of a verb is in the Free State, but when it is clitic doubled it is in the Construct State.

In this paper I provide cross-linguistic evidence for a functional projection between D and NP, which I call “Number Phrase” (NumP). In a full noun phrase, the head of this projection is, among other things, the locus of number specification (singular or plural) of a noun phrase. Pronominal noun phrases are distinguished from full noun phrases by the fact that they lack a lexical projection, i.e., they lack a NP. The existence of two distinct functional categories predicts the existence of at least two classes of pronouns, those of the category D, and those of the category Num. In both Modern Hebrew and Haitian, there is evidence that this prediction is borne out.

Stowell (1981) demonstrates that nominal phrases in VP or PP are subject to certain constraints which are not pertinent in the domain of NP or AP. Nominal phrases in VP or PP are obligatory and they must be realized in a position which is adjacent to the head of the phrase (i.e., in a phrase marker; “V° NP” or “P° NP”). In contrast, nominal phrases in NP or AP are optional and do not have to be adjacent to the head. There is a systematic exception to this generalization in the lexically determined class of nouns known as Bare NP adverbs (cf. Larson 1985). Nominal phrases headed by one of this class of nouns appear optionally in VP and they are not required to be adjacent to the verb.

Many theorists (e.g., Hyams 1987; Pinker 1984) working in the framework of generative grammar have assumed the “Continuity Hypothesis”. Under this view language acquisition is made up of a series of continuous stages. The child moves from one stage to another, and at each stage the grammar posited by the child is determined by Universal Grammar (UG). The motivation for the movement from one stage to another comes from a trigger in the language environment which causes the child to restructure her grammar, and so move on to the next stage. The Continuity Hypothesis has provided an explanation for the acquisition of many linguistic structures; however, in many instances it has been difficult to explain exactly which data in the language environment act as a trigger, and why they have an effect on the child’s grammar.

Current linguistic theory offers a highly detailed account of what linguistic competence consists of, as well as an indication of how that competence is acquired by L1 learners, via an innate Universal Grammar (UG). In second language (L2) acquisition, a major issue is the nature of the L2 learner’s competence and the degree to which it is similar to or different from the competence attained by native speakers. A theory of linguistic competence is essential to our understanding of what L2 competence might consist of, and should inform L2 acquisition research (Gregg 1989). In this paper, I will adopt certain recent proposals concerning verb movement and the functional categories Agreement and Tense (Chomsky 1989; Pollock 1989), and investigate whether these proposals can provide a suitable explanation of the linguistic behaviour of French learners of English.