The present dissertation intends to investigate the syntactic nature and L2-acquisition of passive sentence structure in two Romance varieties, Italian and Spanish. First, I will present an analytic proposal couched within the Generative Approach (Chomsky, 1957, and subsequent work); from there, and following Perlmutter and Postal's (1977)…

Negation is a universal component of human language; polarity sensitivity (i.e., lexical distributional constraints in relation to negation) is arguably so while being pervasive across languages. Negation has long been a field of inquiry in psychological theories and experiments of reasoning, which inspired many follow-up studies of negation and…

This article proposes a formal model of the human language faculty that accommodates the possibility of 'attrition' (modification or loss) of morphosyntactic properties in a first language. Modeling L1 grammatical attrition entails a quite fundamental paradox: if the structure of the language faculty in principle allows for attrition of…

Formal theories of mental representation have receded from the importance they had in the early days of cognitive science. I argue that such theories are crucial in any mental domain, not just for their own sake, but to guide experimental inquiry, as well as to integrate the domain into the mind as a whole. To illustrate the criteria of adequacy…

The extensive literature on subject expression in Spanish makes for rich comparisons between generative (formal) and usage-based (functional) approaches to language acquisition. This article explores how the problem of subject expression has been conceptualized within each research tradition, as well as unanswered questions that both approaches…

Generative approaches to language have long recognized the natural link between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition. The basic idea is that the knowledge representations provided by Universal Grammar enable children to acquire language as reliably as they do because these representations highlight the…

Competence-based theories of island effects play a central role in generative grammar, yet the graded nature of many syntactic islands has never been properly accounted for. Categorical syntactic accounts of island effects have persisted in spite of a wealth of data suggesting that island effects are not categorical in nature and that…

Standard criticisms of unjustified grammaticality assignments in generative syntax are easily countered by reminders that grammaticality is a different notion from acceptability. In response, the criticisms are reformulated here in a way that interprets unjustified assignments as possible evidence of the predictive failure of current generative…

In an attempt to explain first language attrition in emigrant populations, this paper investigates the explanatory power of a framework that has--until now--received little attention: the regression hypothesis (Jakobson, 1941). This hypothesis predicts that the order of attrition is the reverse of the order of acquisition. The regression…

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)…

The notions of categorical selection (c-selection) and semantic selection (s-selection) as outlined in recent research on generative grammar are discussed. The first section addresses the type of selectional constraint imposed on English small clauses (e.g., "John considers [Mary smart]"). In the second section, it is suggested that the constraint…

Semantic neology is studied, and the theories of several linguistis on neology are examined. Particular emphasis is placed on the work of Noam Chomsky. (Text is in French.) (PMP)

The reply is divided into three sections discussing the data on derivations that Zaitchik had cited against the author's theory, some minor points on the internal structure of the theory, and two major points about explicitness. (SC)

This discussion focuses on the formalist and functionalist views of language, which put forth conflicting theories as to the origins of language. It is concluded that this conflict can be resolved because central to language there exists an autonomous grammar shaped in part by natural selection. (JL)

In response to a previous article attempting to bridge the gap between formalist and functionalist theories of language, it is argued that the theory's views of evolutionary theory, natural selection, and functionalism are naive. It is suggested that coming to these issues from a generative standpoint naturally subsumes the functionalist claims of…