Recent analyses of Russian (Halle 1963, Lightner 1972) have been forced by the criteria of rule "naturalness" and rule "generality" to posit highly abstract underlying forms. These underlying forms and rules are claimed to represent the speaker's competence. Such analyses are now being criticized (Derwing 1973, Hooper 1974) on the following…

This paper considers the way in which a grammar must account for the speaker's knowledge of sentence force as opposed to sentence form or meaning and the way in which this force is related to a sentence. According to the performative analysis approach, the force of each sentence should be stated explicitly as a part of the underlying…