Demonstrates through statistical sampling that variability in the use of the so-called Spanish "personal a" can be explained by the importance of the role that marked nouns have in discourse and applies that notion to a case study from Hispanic literature. (CB)

Reports on analyses of stress patterns and syllable length for male names, female names, and English nouns, exploring such differences as female names having more syllables, female names typically beginning with unstressed syllables, and male names typically forming the unmarked case. (24 references) (CB)

Argues that the i-within-i condition (Chomsky, 1981) is both empirically inadequate and theoretically incoherent. A definition for circular chains, a condition on the interpretation of the reference of free pronominals and anaphors, is proposed that adequately accounts for the data involving referential circularity that had been previously…

Presents a preliminary study of the use of the Spanish preposition "a" with inanimate direct object nouns (DOs). The properties of such constructions at the lexical, sentence, and discourse levels are described, and the general principles that condition the preposition's appearance are discussed. (21 references) (GLR)

Describes a computer-based connectionist-type network model that correctly identified the gender of a set of French nouns, relying solely on information inherent in the nouns' structures, in the absence of explicit rules for evaluating nouns, through discovering criterial gender-specific features through examples of masculine and feminine nouns.…

The nature of case-coding strategies for relative clause formation is explained, focusing on why languages use such strategies and the forms such strategies can take. Language-specific illustration in Modern Welsh is provided to support proposed redefinitions of hierarchy and case-coding strategies. (22 references) (Author/CB)

Comparison of the 1970 and 1984 editions of a Spanish dictionary regarding the accommodation of female counterparts of traditionally male occupations found such adjustments as use of the feminine article "la" and the suffixes "-a" and "-nta." Other nouns proved to be particularly resistant to such accommodation. (CB)

Analyzes the rightward movement of noun and prepositional phrases in the Early Old English poem "Beowulf." Evidence is provided for heavy noun phrase shift, with a characteristic major intonational boundary between the main verb and the postponed noun phrase, and preposition phrase extraposition, where the intonational boundary was much…