Discusses alternatives to a number of assumptions fundamental to established linguistic theory which lead to a coherent view of linguistic structure that treats grammar as a symbolic phenomenon and emphasizes importance of analyzability to grammatical structure. Outlines descriptive framework called Space Grammar and its approach to semantic…

A theme running through much of the functionalist literature in linguistics is that grammatical structure often has an "iconic" motivation. Claims supporting this theme are discounted, and the implications are discussed of iconic relationships in language for the autonomy hypothesis and the evolution of language. (190 references)…

Attempts to provide a precise definition for topic and to derive most of the properties of topic from this definition. The main assumption is that the topic-comment construction is a syntactic device employed to fulfill certain discourse functions. (Author/VWL)

Certain types of pronominal differentiation are functionally related to certain types of transformational rules; this theory leads to a concept of a functional component within which these aspects of grammar are complementary. Their complementarity is matched by an inverse relationship in functional values from one language to another. (CK)

Introduces selected concepts from the Space Grammar theory of linguistic structure. It is argued that the form of the auxiliary, apart from certain morphological adjustments, reflects each step of the conceptual path leading from the speaker to the objective situation described by the main verb. (Author/EJS)

Shows how the subject pronoun in a cleft sentence together with the cleft clause function pragmatically as a discontinuous definite description. Presents a new syntactic analysis of clefts, which treats the cleft clause as an extraposed complement of the cleft subject pronoun, adjoined to the clefted constituent. (Author/VWL)

Using data from Japanese, this article shows that the distinction between unergatives and unaccusatives is fully determined on the basis of the verb's inherent lexical meanings. (55 references) (Author/CK)

Presents an integrated theory of the syntactic and semantic representation of complements where the unexpressed subjects of the embedded verb-phrase complement are subject to certain interpretation restrictions. It is argued that the grammar of English controlled complements can be derived from the interaction of semantically based principles of…

Argues that English intonational structure and surface syntactic structure are one and can be captured in a single unified grammar. The interpretations that the grammar provides for such constituents corresponds to the entities and open propositions of intonational meaning that have been described as "theme" and "rheme,""given" and "new," and…

Critiques Aoun and Li's (1993) syntactic analysis of quantifier-scope interpretations in English, Chinese, and Japanese, showing serious theoretical problems with their results and proposing a quantifier-scope analysis that avoids those problems. The proposed expert system considers several important considerations and arrives at a composite…

Provides evidence from child language acquisition and comparative syntax for existence of a syntactic parameter in the classical sense of Chomsky (1981), with simultaneous effects on syntactic argument structure. Implications are that syntax is subject to points of substantive parametric variation as envisioned in Chomsky, and the time course of…

Polar interrogative sentences differ from declarative sentences in terms of illocutionary forces and the linguistic analysis of their meaning. It is possible to isolate small numbers of syntactic and semantic categories and an unlimited number of illocutionary forces resulting from their interaction with the total situation. (CK)

Argues that "outbound anaphora," contrary to the argument of Postal, is fully grammatical and governed by independently motivated pragmatic principles. The felicity of outbound anaphora is demonstrated to be a function of the accessibility of the discourse entity that is evoked by the word-internal element and to which the anaphor is…