Volume 37, Issue 5

The main goal of this article is to develop an approach to free-word-order structures in German that reconciles the findings of two different lines of research: competition-based models that center upon the interaction of factors like definiteness, animacy, case, and focus on the one hand, and optimality-theoretic syntax with its violable and ranked constraints on the other. The analysis relies on the existence of a syntactic scrambling operation. The major claims are as follows: (i) Scrambling is triggered by a subhierarchy of violable and ranked linearization constraints. (ii) Optimality under at least one linearization constraint results in grammaticality, optimality under the whole subhierarchy results in an unmarked structure (unmarked structures do not correspond to D-structures, as is often assumed). (iii) The distinction between subhierarchies and matrix hierarchies in optimality theory parallels the traditional distinction between weak and strong rules. It accounts for the difference between weak pronoun fronting to a Wackernagel position, which results in a fixed order, and scrambling to VP, which does not. (iv) Language-specific variation with respect to scrambling options is due to constraint reranking.

The theme of this paper, double or multiple negation with NC-reading, belongs to the linguistic phenomena that have gained increasing interest in recent years. In section 2, I develop a DRT-based theory of NC-constructions in a single language (Bavarian), which assigns double negation a well-defined function on the syntax-semantics interface: double negation is a grammatical means to harmonize competing scope effects of negation and quantification. This theory permits the formulation of several hypotheses, for example, specifying contexts in which double negation with NC is excluded. In section 3, these hypotheses are formulated and empirically proved. In section 4, I offer some speculations about why standard languages like German could survive without DN, but some could not (e.g. Italian).

The purpose of this paper is twofold: one goal is to establish that in languages like Korean question clauses are best characterized if classified into self-addressed vs. hearer-addressed questions, which are shown to be morphologically distinguished, along with the distinction of wh- vs. yes–no questions. The other is to show that the so-called existential quantifiers (or indeterminate nouns) are in fact embedded self-addressed questions, contra Kim's (1989, 1990) claim that Korean wh -phrases are pure quantifiers undergoing LF quantifier raising. I also show that the long standing “ambiguity problem” is only apparent: A wh -phrase, if c-commanded by a self-addressed question marker, gets interpreted as an existential quantifier, while it is interpreted as a pure wh -word if c-commanded by a hearer-addressed question marker.

This paper deals with two cognate modifiers, respective and respectively . Despite the obvious fact that they belong to di Verent parts of speech, they have been considered to perform the same semantic function of mapping two sets of participants in a sentence, and of distributing the predicate of the sentence, in accordance with the mapping, to a number of propositions representing the subparts of the event described in that sentence. As regards their syntactic occurrences, they have been regarded as complementary in distribution. This paper endeavors to show that the two modifiers play different roles and select different domains for their notional operations, and that the syntactic complementarity claimed by many researchers is only apparent and does not obtain in every case. The important thing to note in handling the semantic function and syntactic distribution of these modifiers is their difference in syntactic category. We begin with this very basic observation, and in the course of this study, the slight morphological difference proves to be strongly connected with every aspect of the syntactic and semantic properties of the two modifiers.

Constituents of complex words can themselves be complex words. Some kinds of complex constituents appear more often than others. This study presents a quantitative investigation of this phenomenon. We show that many kinds of base words are significantly overrepresented or underrepresented. This holds not only for constituents of derived words, but also for constituents of compounds. We furthermore show that the degree of overrepresentation or underrepresentation correlates with word frequency, word length, and degree of productivity. We offer a functional explanation of this correlation in terms of processing and storage in the mental lexicon.

The special semantic characteristics of bare nominals (nonspecificity and lack of scopal interactions) are best explained in terms of an approach that views these not as full DPs, but as minimal nominal projections containing an internal pro argument. The evidence from child language suggests that such aspects of the interpretation of bare nominals are readily accessible in children's grammar. Thirty-six English-speaking children participated in a controlled comprehension study comparing their interpretation of sentences with quantifiers involving both the bare noun construction and full DPs. Children seemed to readily understand the interpretive differences between the two structures, suggesting that the presence or absence of a determiner is a sufficient trigger for the acquisition of such construction.

Ingo Plag: Morphological Productivity: Structural Constraints in English Derivation . Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999. x+290 pp. (Laurie Bauer) Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy: The Origins of Complex Language: An Inquiry into the Evolutionary Beginnings of Sentences, Syllables and Truth . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. xi+260 pp. (Laurie Bauer) Susan Gass, Antonella Sorace, and Larry Selinker: Second Language Learning Data Analysis , 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1999.viii+126 pp. (Theo Bongaerts) J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill: Dialectology , 2nd ed. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xiv+201 pp. (Heinrich Löffler) John Lynch: Pacific Languages: An Introduction . Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998. xix+359 pp. US $35.00, paper. (Gunter Senft)

The following list includes recent books potentially relevant to the traditional and/or allied disciplines of linguistics. An effort is made to see that all books of interest to the readers of Linguistics are reviewed. Publishers receive two copies of reviews accepted for publication. We regret that it is not possible to return unreviewed books to publishers.