The author proposes an abstract form for the base categorial component of a transformational grammar--a form which represents categories and relations (functions) in a way that holds reasonable promise for resolving certain very broad problems of the interplay between linguistic form and function. The problems are so broad that almost everything…

This paper attempts to demonstrate the concept and method of deriving various English "true possessives" by nominalizing sentences of the form "X has Y." First considered is the motivation for deriving genetives from underlying sentences rather than for treating only the surface form of such genitives: the use of auxiliary…

Syntactic rules with structural descriptions which apply on several linguistic levels are called global derivational constraints. (DD)

An attempt is made to overcome the shortcomings in Robinson's model of generative grammar by modifying her dependency rules and adding semantic specifications to the dependents of V, taking into account some of the considerations that led Fillmore to make up his cases. (Author)

Discusses the possessive constructions in English, in particular, the postponed construction. (An example of the postponed construction is "a book of John's," contrasted with "John's book," the preposed construction.) The study contrasts the possessive "of" with the "of" in other constructions and concludes…

This paper argues: (1) that one of the major syntactic constraints adopted by many proponents of the Extended Standard Theory, namely the Specified Subject Condition (SSC), is empirically inadequate with respect to "unbounded" extraction phenomena; and (2) that the unbounded extraction data which the SSC purported to account for need to be…

This collection of articles written over a period of 10 years concerning the transformational syntax of English has been divided into six sections. The articles in the first section provide background material for the reader with no specialized linguistic preparation. They present the fundamental questions that linguists are now asking, some of…

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.…

In line with current thinking in transformational grammar, syntax as a system can and should be studied before a study is made of the use of that system. Chomsky's lexical redundancy rule is an area for further study, possibly to come closer to defining and achieving explanatory adequacy. If it is observed that English nouns come in two types,…

This volume of working papers includes seven papers discussing current theory and research in linguistics, phonetics, semantics, and syntax. The following titles are in the collection: "'Do' from 'Occur',""The Syntax of the Verb 'Happen',""Subjects and Agents,""Modal Auxiliaries in Infinitive Clauses in English,""Some Problems in the Description…