Volume 23, Issue 1

The purpose of this article is to investigate a variety of languages with laryngeal contrasts that have usually been characterized in the literature of generative phonology as having a two-way [voice] contrast and to show that by adopting a narrower interpretation of [voice] to cover only those languages which exhibit prevoicing in word-initial stops, a better understanding of the laryngeal contrasts and assimilation of laryngeal features in these languages is possible. We consider Hungarian, Russian, German, Swedish, and Turkish, which have all been analyzed as having a two-way [voice] contrast for stops. We suggest that the feature [voice] is indeed appropriate for Hungarian and Russian, that the feature of contrast in German is [spread] and that, in Swedish and Turkish, both [voice] and [spread] occur in underlying forms. Analyses are provided for these stop systems in the framework of Optimality Theory.

There are three relative clause constructions in Kiswahili characterized by the distribution of the relative marker. The relative marker appears as a suffix on the relative complementizer, an affix between tense marker and the stem, and a suffix on the verb. The article attempts to account for: (a) the three positions of the relative marker, and (b) the order of morphemes in the verb. Recent derivational accounts suggest that the three constructions result from moving a verbal element to the relative marker, an example of Chomsky’s (1995) Attract-F. This article demonstrates that the movement is triggered by the C° attracting the nearest head with the feature [+V]. Two of the heads are the auxiliary (where tense and negation marker are located) and the verb stem. In tensed clauses, the verb incorporates into the Mood Projection explaining why in VP ellipsis constructions the verb is not eliminated with the rest of the VP. The Aux and the verb stem are attached due to lowering of the Aux and cliticization on the verb stem, a post-syntactic operation.

This article investigates properties of predicate coordination by means of sosite ‘and’ in Japanese. It points out that conjuncts of a sosite predicate coordination structure can contain nominative subjects but not tense morphemes. After establishing that the sosite predicate coordination construction is in fact a case of coordination (rather than subordination), several possible structural analyses of it are examined. It is shown that the analysis in which projections of vP are conjoined to be a complement of T is both empirically and theoretically most credible. The important implication of this conclusion is that subjects and verbs are (at least optionally) allowed to stay within projections of vP in overt syntax in Japanese. Morphological consideration is also given to interchange-ability of conjuncts.