The Linguistic Review 

About: The Linguistic Review is an academic journal published by De Gruyter. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Theoretical linguistics & Cognitive linguistics. It has an ISSN identifier of 0167-6318. Over the lifetime, 610 publications have been published receiving 18300 citations. The journal is also known as: Linguistic Review.

Argument Structure and Morphology

Abstract: That there is some regulär relation between the argument structures of morphologically related words is clear and well-known, and there are several proposals about how such relations can be characterized. This paper presents another such proposal, one that differs from previous proposals mainly in that it represents an attempt to be highly restrictive, perhaps erring in that direction. By argument structure of a lexical item I mean simply a labelled listing of the arguments that a lexical item can have. I will adopt the labelling proposed by Gruber (1976) (Actor, Theme, Goal, Source), though the actual labels themselves are not important. These are called thematic relations. Now suppose that a lexical item has an argument structure, and we apply some morphological rule to that lexical item to derive a new lexical item, with a new argument structure. What we want to characterize in this paper is the function that will relate the old argument structure to the new argument structure. One way to do this would be to dive right in and write a notation for writing argument structure transformations in. This is essentially what past proposals have done. What I intend to do instead is to specify two functions (\"internalize X\" and \"externalize X\"), each parameterized by the thematic relations. Since there are finitely many thematic relations, there are finitely many functions, and the claim is that these exhaust the possibilities. Before these functions can be specified, there are a number of topics that must be discussed which are independent of these functions. For example, we must have a theory of exactly how many argument types (thematic relations) there are. Furthermore, we must determine whether there is any further structure to the argument structure of a verb than

Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments

Abstract: This article examines a type of argument for linguistic nativism that takes the following form: (i) a fact about some natural language is exhibited that allegedly could not be learned from experience without access to a certain kind of (positive) data; (ii) it is claimed that data of the type in question are not found in normal linguistic experience; hence (iii) it is concluded that people cannot be learning the language from mere exposure to language use. We analyze the components of this sort of argument carefully, and examine four exemplars, none of which hold up. We conclude that linguists have some additional work to do if they wish to sustain their claims about having provided support for linguistic nativism, and we offer some reasons for thinking that the relevant kind of future work on this issue is likely to further undermine the linguistic nativist position.

Opacity and cyclicity

Abstract: Cyclic phonology-morphology interactions and opacity have been dealt with in strictly parallelist OT by introducing new constraint types, including Base-Output constraints and Sympathy. An alternative OT approach to the phonology-morphology interface is a constraint-based version of Lexical Phonology and Morphology (LPM), in which stems, words, and sentences are subject to separate, serially related OT constraint systems. I show that OT-based LPM provides a superior account of the cyclic morphology/phonology interaction in Levantine data from which Kenstowicz and Kager drew support for Base-Output constraints, and that the same account explains the derivational opacity phenomena for which Sympathy theory provides a purely descriptive solution.

Unergatives as copular verbs; locational and existential predication

Abstract: predicate TAThe obligatoriness of the -phrase is a consequence of the non-overt character of this predicate, i.e. we Claim that the abstract predicate is identified through its complement. This will be shown to be independently motivated. The TA-predicate, which is lexically realized by man in the ergative ^wömi-class in Chinese (cf. (37)), also shows up in the transitive counterparts, äs is shown by the following examples. As in Dutch, the material denoting complement of the TApredicate is optional in Chinese äs well. (45) a. Ta gua hua zai qiang-shang le. he hang painting at wall-top ASP 'He has hanged pictures on the wall.' b. Ta ba hua gua zai qiang-shang le. he BA painting hang at wall-top ASP 'He has hanged the pictures on the wall.' c. Ta ba qiang gua man (hua) le. he BA wall hang füll (paintings) ASP 'He has hanged the wall with paintings.' There is a further piece of evidence in favour of the correctness of this analysis of beverbs. In general, predicates denoting an activity may take a resultative small-clause, unlike statives and achievements. In Dutch, this phenomenon is much more common than in English. It is in itself surprising, therefore, to observe that with beverbs the addition of a resultative SC is uniformly impossible, despite the fact that these verbs meet the aspectual requirements. The phenomenon is illustrated by the examples in (46): Unergatives äs Copular Verbs 21 (46) a. dal hij het huis (*vervallen) bewoont. that he the house delapidated BElives b. dal de dokter de patient (*genezen) behandelt, that the doctor the patient cured BEtreats c. dat ik de tuin (*vol) beplant, that I the garden füll BEplant d. dat ik de tulpen (*plat) begiet. that I the tulips flat BEpour Under the analysis presented here this gap in the distribution of resultative SCs finds an immediate explanation, given that in general no two predicates can head a SC: äs beitself is already the predicate of a SC, there is no role for yet a second resultative predicate. Again, we see that a verb may predicate over an object NP, or alternatively take a SC-complement. In fact, the sentences in (38) may be structurally ambiguous themselves, i.e. the verb may take a single NP object, with the locative PP functioning äs an adjunct, or the NP and the locative PP form a SC complement, itself denoting the result of the activity. This ambiguity may exist in some cases, but not in all. Consider the example in (47a). Postverbal occurrence of the PP is at best extremely marginal, äs is to be expected if postverbal occurrence requires an adjunct construal, i.e. a modification of the event. Yet other examples only allow the SC-structure, like the verb in (47b). The stress pattern of most of the examples also points in the direction of a SC-analysis. (47) a. dat hij de boter op z'n brood smeert/??smeert op zijn brood. that he the butter on his bread smears/smears on his bread b. dat hij de kaas op z'n brood legt/* legt op z'n brood. that he the cheese on his bread lays/lays on his bread The locative alternation is not merely an alternative way of realizing the same argument structure: the verb takes a SC-complement, denoting the result of the activity. The predicate of this complement may be the affixal predicate be-\ Dutch, or the abstract predicate TA in English. 2.3.3 Positional verbs In this subsection we discuss another instance of locative alternation, this time in the complement of positional verbs. Essentially, we are following the analysis provided in Mulder & Wehrmann (1989). Unlike the transitive cases discussed in the previous subsection, the SC-complement does not denote a result, but the positional verb again predicates of a state of affairs, äs in the earlier cases with positional verbs (cf. section 2.2). The phenomenon is illustrated by (48)-(49).

The possessor that ran away from home

Abstract: I will argue that NP in Hungarian is S-like in that it has an INFL and a peripheral position. It is a matter of debate these days whether Hungarian is configurational at the S-level, see E. Kiss (1981, 1982) and Horvath (1981). My analysis of the possessive NP does not crucially hinge on that question since this category is undoubtedly configurational; nevertheless, at least one technical and one intuitive aspect of it will be seen to score a point for the non-configurational hypothesis.