This paper examines form and meaning of a class of simple sentences in which various constituents are brought into focus by the speaker. The Akan language is used, and the syntactic processes, or focus-marking, required to derive surface structures of the sentences are examined. (CK)

Proposes that NPs determined by the generic indefinite article represent abstract concepts and as such are not inherently different from indefinite NPs appearing in copulative predicates. (Author/RM)

Presents an heuristic procedure, based on cooccurrence of forms, for identifying the closed systems of a language and to show how the systems interlock, differ in meaning, and manifest themselves. (AM)

The implications of the contrastive particle "wa" and the emphatic particle "mo" occurring with quantifiers are examined. (Author)

The Spanish feminine article /el/, ordinarily the singular masculine definite article, has been used as evidence of the need for obligatory disagreement rules. Others explain the anamoly by means of referral rules. A third solution is suggested: an allomorphy rule which can be interpreted syntactically or phonologically. (LMO)

Presents an analysis of noun phrases in which the definite article is used and omitted. Several studies are reviewed and two types of occurrences are distinguished: direct (agent, instrument, object) and oblique (locative, dative). The relationships, perceptible in the deep structure, are blurred in the transformations leading to surface…

Examines the theory of empty categories in a Government and Binding analysis of Modern Greek syntax. No empty subject category is found and so the pro-drop parameter is a misnomer here. Further support for the correlation between parametric variation and inflexional or morphological properties of a language is presented. (Author/LMO)

Given that the principal bounding nodes, or barriers, for subjacency are noun phrase (NP), S, and S-bar, with S optionally a barrier, NP and S-bar obligatorily barriers, differences between Greek and English WH-movement are discussed. The contrasts are derived from independently motivated differences in NP structure between the two languages.…

This paper addresses itself to the question of why the English language should have levelled almost all of its inflections, and what the relationship is between the breakdown of the case system and the rise of fixed word-order, prepositional phrases, and verb periphrases. The explanation proposed for the phenomenon of syntactic drift is considered…