Two experiments investigated the processing and representation of Dutch compound words as a function of their semantic transparency. The results provided clear evidence for the sensitivity of the lexical processing system to morphological complexity, independent of semantic transparency. (50 references) (MDM)

Evidence from a sample of informal written language (personal correspondence) shows that the most important constraints on pronoun usage in subject position are discourse-based. The quantitative analysis supports the hypothesis that pronoun usage is "functional" since semantically relevant information is preserved in surface structure.…

Two studies are reported in which the following theory is tested: the agrammatic sentence form that is observed in the spontaneous speech of Broca's aphasics is attributable to the selection of elliptical syntactic structures in which the slots for many of the closed-class words that appear in complete sentences are lacking. (54 references)…

Short case studies show that certain inflectional categories, particularly morphological case, cannot be treated as functional heads projecting a phrase of their own. Examples are drawn from Hungarian, Finnish and Finno-Volgaic, Erzya Mordvin, Icelandic, and Turkish. (Contains 27 references.) (LB)

The behavior of non-terms in Shaba Swahili is examined within the framework of relational grammar. Shaba Swahili is peculiar because it reflects a complex linguistic situation; its population consisted of people coming from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The behavior of Shaba Swahili non-terms is discussed with reference to several…

A study of concord phenomena in Rio de Janeiro spoken Portuguese found that, in the serial context, the linguistic system is so highly constrained that external, and even internal, influences are blocked. Authors conclude that strong constraints should be identified and further studies undertaken to understand the interplay of the diverse forces…

This paper provides an analysis of the manual and non-manual pronouns identified in Mexican Sign Language (MSL) used by a female speaker in 1993, discusses syntactic uses of each type, and examines pronoun deletion. MSL has two distinct modes of expressing pronominal relationships: manual pronouns (including indexical, incorporated, classifiers,…

Many of the Zapotecan (Mexico) languages have a unique way of signaling co-reference between the subject and the possessor of the object: the subject is null. Analysis of such a construction is problematic to current theories of anaphoric construction. In this analysis, the construction is described and the theoretical problem is underlined by…

Evidence from Irish is presented to show that a language may be marked so that Spec position is located on one side of the head, and all nonspecifiers, at both levels of phrase structure, occur on the other. It is concluded that Irish requires adjuncts to conform to head-initiality. (Contains 50 references.) (LB)

Attempts to resolve an outstanding question as to the most appropriate structural description of the relationship between subject and verb in Bislama (a Melanesian creole spoken in Vanuatu), discusses what the implications of this analysis might be for a Creole ontogeny, and attempts to unify this analysis to the verb system with the distribution…

The syllabic structure in the Hmongic language, Hmu (spoken by nearly one million people), is examined, based on the dialect of Hmu spoken in the town of Yanghao in the Southeast Guizhou Miao-Dong Autonomous District of southern China. The discussion is based entirely on data presented by Wang (1979). From the examination, two rules with the…

In an anniversary tribute to Paul Diderichsen, this report suggests that the theories and analyses put forth by Diderichsen in 1935 are central to both the general and empirical research on the Germanic languages. Particular emphasis is placed on the proposal to analyze the "verb-second-analysis" phenomenon in Germanic languages.…

In both French and Macedonian there are constructions that are reminiscent of the passive but their meaning is active. In French this occurs with participial statements that appear to have either an instrumental relationship or be a chronological marker (e.g., "le dejeuner fini,..."). In Macedonian, one only adds a marker showing…

This report is an overview of some of the common features of African languages. It is difficult to present a concise and comprehensive summary of the features that are likely to be found in a group of languages as large and as totally unrelated as are the one to two thousand languages found on the continent of Africa. Therefore, representative…

A discussion focusing on the abstractness of analysis in phonology, debated since the 1960s, describes the issue, reviews the literature on the subject, cites specific natural language examples, and examines the extent to which the issue has been resolved. An underlying representation is said to be abstract if it is different from the derived one,…