Volume 28, Issue 3

This article shows how Dell and Elmedlaoui's well-known analysis of syllabification in Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber can be generalized so that it can be successfully applied in a much wider range of languages. Khalka Mongolian, which has extensive epenthesis and complex codas, could be a textbook example of templatic syllabification. Nevertheless, it is successfully analyzed by the generalization, with coda sonority sequencing derived as a consequence the basic idea of building syllable structure at sonority maxima, which is the heart of Dell and Elmedlaoui's analysis. The ultimate aim is to extend the theory to a universal theory of syllabification, supplanting templatic derivational analyses. This article should be viewed as a contribution towards developing such a universal theory.

This paper argues that phonological features must represent both the articulatory and acoustic properties of speech sounds. Evidence for this claim comes from the long-distance restrictions on ejectives and aspirates in Quechua (MacEachern, Laryngeal co-occurrence restrictions, Garland, 1999), which require both that ejectives and aspirates be referred to as a class and that they be distinguishable. The standard, articulatory features [constricted glottis] and [spread glottis] can distinguish ejectives and aspirates, but it is not possible to group these two types of segments in articulatory terms. While ejectives and aspirates are articulatorily disparate, they can be grouped in acoustic terms. Both types of segments are characterized by a long lag between the release of the oral constriction and the onset of voicing in a following sonorant, referred to by the proposed feature [long VOT]. Introducing acoustic features allows for a simple and restrictive account of the phonological behavior of laryngeally marked segments, both in Quechua and cross-linguistically.

Due to the programmatic nature of Minimalism, there are many directions that variations of this formalism can take. This paper demonstrates that one trend in Minimalism is steering toward Dependency Grammar (DG): bare phrase structure, label-less trees, and specifier-less syntax are all aspects/developments of/within Minimalism that are steering toward a dependency-based (as opposed to a constituency based) understanding of syntax and grammar. With this trend in mind, a version of Merge is introduced that completes the development. This version generates dependency-based structures in a strictly left-to-right manner, i.e., in the manner that all natural language is spoken and processed. The particular innovation that makes this concept of Merge possible is the catena . The catena is a novel unit of syntactic analysis that is unique to dependency-based structures. A number of empirical considerations support catena-based left-to-right Merge, e.g., garden path sentences, restrictions on center embeddings, aspects of coordinate structures, subject-auxiliary inversion, the distribution of pronouns, etc.

Categorizing heads, aka categorizers, like n and v are the elements that make nouns and verbs in approaches embracing syntactic decomposition. In this paper they are claimed to bear distinctive LF-interpretable categorial features [N] and [V] , features that set the interpretive perspective of nouns and verbs as sortal and extending-into-time respectively. Consequently, I argue that categorizers are necessary for the interpretation of roots because they provide the interpretive perspective in which concepts can be related with semantically deficient roots through syntax. This explains the observation that free roots cannot be merged directly in a syntactic derivation. On the basis of their categorial status, the paper also offers a new classification of the basic elements syntax manipulates, which includes roots, inner morphemes, categorizers, and functional heads.