This dissertation is an attempt to characterize the notion "exception to a rule of grammar" within the context of Chomsky's conception of grammar as given in "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax." This notion depends on a prior notion of "rule government"--in each phrase marker on which a transformational rule may…

THIS PAPER DEALS WITH THE SEMANTIC PHENOMENA WHICH UNDERLIE THE SURFACE STRUCTURE OCCURRENCE (OR NONOCCURRENCE) IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF ENGLISH NOUNS OF SUCH ITEMS AS THE DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE ARTICLES AND THE PLURAL SUFFIX. THE INFLECTION OF ENGLISH NOUNS IS DISCUSSED IN SEMANTIC TERMS. RULES ARE GIVEN FOR THE GENERATION OF THESE INFLECTIONS IN…

Revised version of a paper presented at the Spring Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, York, April 1971. (DD)

To express that a degree of one event is conditioned by (or paralleled by) a degree of another, the "the...the..." construction with a comparative after each "the" is used. Examples include sentences such as: (1) the more dangerous mountains are to climb, the more challenging they are; (2) the more often a man has been in…

In this paper, non-standard types of agreement are examined. Such agreement types are those in which two or more supposedly agreeing categories show discord rather than concord. For example, if a language has noun-adjective agreement, there may, under limited circumstances, be non-standard agreement where the subject is plural and the agreeing…

THESE FOUR TESTS--"THAT-NOUN CLAUSES (ABSTRACT NOUNS, ABSTRACT ADJECTIVES, AND TRANSITIVE ANIMATE VERBS),""REVIEW OF EMBEDDING AND CONJUNCTIVE TRANSFORMATIONS,""COMPLEMENT VERBS," AND "IMPERATIVE"--WERE DESIGNED BY THE OREGON CURRICULUM STUDY CENTER FOR A 10TH-GRADE LANGUAGE CURRICULUM. THEY ARE INTENDED TO…

Transferred epithets, adjectives that appear to have been transferred from adverb to prenominal position (e.g., "I balanced a thoughtful lump of sugar..."), have been viewed as unanalyzable both grammatically and from the viewpoint of transformational derivation. However, another explanation is that these combinations show patterns…