The present study examines the production and intuition of Spanish clitics in clitic left dislocation (CLLD) structures among 26 Spanish heritage speakers (HSs) born and raised in Brazil. We tested clitic production and intuition in contexts in which Spanish clitics vary as a function of the semantic features of the object that they refer to.…

This study explores wh-in-situ in CamE within Chomsky's (1998) Theory of Attraction. The data, both written and spoken, come from different sources. Given that we are a speaker of the language, part of the data come from our intuitive knowledge and everyday conversations with friends, students and colleagues. The other part is from a scrutiny of…

A sentence such as "I am going to find the store" may be reduced to "I[ma]find the store." This reduction consists of a reduction of the auxiliary, changing "I am" to "I'm," and an adjunction of infinitival "to" onto "going" to derive "gonna." From there, "gonna" is…

Analyzes a selection of papers centered around the idea that it is possible to consider the evidence of language variation in linguistic analysis. The papers were presented at the 1972 colloquium on "New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English," Georgetown University. (AM)

This paper examines language variation in terms of overdetermination and underdetermination of structural information as related to grammatical rules and the structure of social behavior. (CLK)

The following aspects of syntax in Indian English are examined: complex sentence formation, interrogative transformation, verb forms, and complementation. It is argued that a set of syntactic rules exists in all non-native second language varieties of English that will generate the non-stylistic deviant patterns discussed. (KM)

This paper examines how tagmemics can be equipped with a notational mechanism to account for significant variability phenomena in language. A brief history of variation theory is followed by a proposal for a tentative notational system for marking variants. An illustration of this system is provided through application to various levels of…

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…

Grammatical theories that rely exclusively on the categorical nature of constituents to determine their syntactic behavior encounter problems when dealing with cleft construction. The ungrammaticality of such constructions is indeed syntactic in nature and can be shown to derive from a general principle of universal grammar (UG), restricting the…

A study of middle verb constructions in Canadian French and Madrid Spanish suggests that two alleged defining characteristics of these constructions are not really defining characteristics. These are: (1) that the constructions only appear in generic sentences, and (2) that they disallow "by"-phrases of the type found in passive…

Six papers on Irish English are presented. "The Study of Hiberno-English" (Jeffrey L. Kallen) surveys some aspects of research on the language and offers a historical context for the subsequent papers. "A Tape-Recorded Survey of Hiberno-English in Its Context" (T. M. Tilling) reports on the early stages of an island-wide survey…

The encyclopedia is designed as a reference work on the history, structure, and use of English. The first section outlines five phases in the development of the English language (origins, Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Modern English) and then proceeds to the varieties of world English and perceptions of English and its future.…

An analysis of the structure of possessive-adjective phrases (e.g., "women's new suitcases, new women's suitcases") in English looks at some data that appear to conflict with the intuitive order of S-structure possessives preceding adjectives. A solution to this apparent anomaly is proposed: it is not the compounding of possessive-noun…

Articles on diverse areas of linguistics include the following: "Correlative Constructions in Chinese" (Steve Harlow, Connie Cullen); "Xhosa Isinkalakahliso Again" (John Kelly); "Conversational Phonetics: Some Aspects of News Receipts in Everyday Talk" (John Local); "Parametric Interpretation in Yorktalk"…

Papers in comparative and historical linguistics are presented. "The Independent Development of Mid Tone in Suma" (Mary Bradshaw) extends earlier research on tone change in Gbaya languages to Suma, a Gbaya language previously not included. "Diachronic Morphology: An Overview" (Brian Joseph) reviews diachronic morphological…