The linguist does not usually describe grammatical structures of stylized sentences because there are none well-formed on the surface. He could use rules for organizational and relational features of the grammar which affect the last lines of generation to produce deviant but acceptable linguistic forms, thereby increasing the predictive power of…

Inversion constructions (declarative sentence constructions in which the subject follows part or all of its verb phrase) are distributed over the whole range of spoken and written language, not along the spoken-written dimension but along a colloquial-literary dimension. Some of these inversions are colloquial or literary for functional reasons,…

Certain word-order patterns are more basic and less marked than others. The more strongly marked a pattern seems to be in isolation, the stronger must be the contextual forces motivating its use, if it is to seem natural in a text. Various topicalizations (of adverbials, objects, and parts of verb phrases, for example) need various degrees of…

The source of syntactic ambiguity and facts concerning the resolution of such ambiguity are discussed in this paper. The attitude of qenerative linguists towards ambiguity is examined, and a working distinction is drawn between vaqueness and ambiguity. The consequences of this distinction are then examined for syntactic ambiguity and an ordering…

This volume accompanies and illustrates "Hierarchy and Universality of Discourse Constituents in New Guinea Languages: Discussion" (FL 003 513), which reports on research carried out in New Guinea and surrounding areas. This volume provides sample texts, over and beyond the fragmentary examples given in the discussion text. The examples…

The distinction between artifact and tool is introduced into the study of language diversity and the posting of linguistic universals. A complicating factor in all language investigations is the use of language as the chief tool to create new language. Analogy and metaphor are considered as two major creative forces at work in all languages.…