Argues that sentences in the "have a V" frame are not idiosyncratic, but exhibit orderly and systematic behavior and are governed by strict semantic rules. Discusses 10 subtypes, each with a slightly different semantic formula. (EKN)

Discusses comparative analysis of spoken and written versions of a narrative to demonstrate that features which have been identified as characterizing oral discourse are also found in written discourse and that the written short story combines syntactic complexity expected in writing with features which create involvement expected in speaking.…

Argues that the account of coordination of unlike categories ought to be unified with the account of feature neutralization under phonological identity. Further argues that this unified account ought not be couched in terms of string of features, but rather in terms of the logic of categories. Study concludes with a discussion of the interactions…

Presents a discourse-functional account of English inversion, based on an examination of a large corpus of naturally occurring tokens. It is argued that inversion serves an information-packaging function and that felicitous inversion depends on the relative discourse-familiarity of the information represented by the preposed and postposed…

Texts in Classical Nahuatl from 1524, in the genre of formal oratory, reveal extensive use of lines showing parallel morphosyntactic and semantic structure. Analysis and translation of a passage point to the applicability of structural analysis to "expressive" as well as "referential" texts; and the importance of understanding…

Verb agreement in the K'iche' agentive voice appears to deviate from the ergative/absolutive system of other Mayan languages, leading some to treat agreement in the agentive as falling outside the regular agreement system as well as to differing views regarding appropriate syntactic representation of the agentive construction with respect to final…

Suggests that agent-focus verbs in Tzotzil are inverse, in the sense of Algonquian linguistics, and that their distribution is determined by the relative obviation status of agent and patient. Evidence for the analysis comes from syntactic constraints on agent-focus verbs and on their use in discourse. (Author/VWL)

A number of syntactic constructions in Mandarin Chinese are analyzed which, synchronically, are unrelated and highly irregular. However, all reflect a diachronic drift which has been operating in Mandarin Chinese, in the light of which the syntactic constructions can be viewed as structures in transition. (Author/RM)

Deals with certain problems inherent in deriving anaphoric pronouns from bound variables. Syntactic rules applied to determine anaphora relations cannot be applied if anaphoric pronouns and their antecedents have identical underlying forms. An approach to anaphora which preserves some advantages of the bound-variable theory without the problems is…

Simplification in structure and confluence between the local-language structure and the prestige-language structure are usually predicted in language death as in pidginization. For a dying Scottish Gaelic dialect, speakers were tested in the two most excessively complex morphological structures the dialect offers. (Author/NCR)

The Saussurean thesis of arbitrariness of the sign is considered incomplete since it specifies only vertical and not horizontal relations. (DD)

Presidential address delivered to the Linguistic Society of America at its Annual Meeting, December 28, 1972, Atlanta, Georgia. (DD)

The right roof constraint'' is the assumption that rightward-movement rules are always upward-bounded; see J.R. Ross' dissertation, Constraints on Variables in Syntax'' (MIT, 1967). (RS)

Collitz lecture delivered at the meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Columbus, Ohio, July 1970. (DS)