This paper examines the syntax of imperative sentences in languages in which imperative verbs have distinctive morphology. Imperative verbs with distinctive morphology either have a distinctive syntax (Modern Greek, Spanish) or distribute like other verbs (Serbo-Croatian, Ancient Greek). The contrast follows from properties of the root…

Languages can differ in fundamental ways with respect to the syntax of sentences with a "missing" direct object. Whereas Japanese and Korean permit null direct objects that are licensed under general discourse conditions (the recoverability of the referent from context) without regard for choice of verb, object ellipsis in English obeys lexical…

This paper focuses on the long-standing problem in Bantu syntax of why some objects lose the ability to be realized as object markers (OMs) in the passive. The standard answer to this question since the work of Gary and Keenan (1977) is that the passive and object marker require the same property (e.g., a grammatical relation or a particular case)…

This study examines the universality of three linguistic constraints on code-switching with two syntactically very different languages, Spanish and Hebrew. Results suggest that the equivalence of structure constraint cannot be postulated as a universal in its present form and that the size-of-constituent constraint is useful only in languages with…

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)

Summarizes the results of Finnish studies dealing with single-word experiments with aphasics as well as lexical decisions and eye-movement registration tests performed on normals. It then proposes a processing model for Finnish nouns, Stem Allomorph/Inflectional Decomposition (SAID), which predicts that both inflected and productive derived forms…

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.…

The clause in Southeastern Tepehuan consists of a predicate, its associated arguments, and other modifying elements. This paper seeks to show the various types of semantic and surface clauses and the relation between them. The semantic clause consists of various semantic components, both nuclear and peripheral, semantic prosodies, and certain…

This guide is intended for speakers of the Chippewa (Ojibwa) language who read and write in English but would like to develop their reading and writing skills in Chippewa. The writing system used is one developed by Charles Fiero and is only one of many possible standardized writing systems for Chippewa. It was selected by the Chippewa Language…

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)…

Supports the theory of level ordering by demonstrating, on the basis of productive morphology and phonology, that Turkish has four lexical levels. The first is the principle of Level Economy, which accounts for systematic exceptionality. The second is Level Prespecification, which exempts a root entirely from early lexical levels. Both of these…

Tutelo is a Siouan language that was once spoken in Virginia and the Carolinas. Before it died out, a few scholars collected enough data on the language to elicit the main features and characteristics of the language. This paper looks at the noun in Tutelo. Specific focus is on the shape of the root, the marking of gender and number, the…

Argues that what have been called rising diphthongs in Frisian can be shown to be glide-vowel sequences of which the glide forms part of the syllable onset tather than being part of the nucleus. This argument is supported by an analysis of the phenomena of breaking. (Author/VWL)

Presents evidence that argument structure is not a semantic but a syntactic level of representation. Evidence is based on the distinction between primary and secondary objects found in languages such as Chichewa. Concludes that because argument structure must express the distinction between primary and secondary objects, it follows that argument…

We examine the inflectional productions of seven Catalan, seven Galician, and seven Spanish speaking agrammatic subjects in an elicitation and a sentence repetition task and consider them in the light of the Tree Pruning Hypothesis (TPH). The results show relatively spared subject person/number agreement with the verb and impaired tense marking…