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Volume 36 - Issue 3 - November 2000

Contents

Page 1 of 2

Research Article

  • Indicators and procedures: nevertheless and but

  • DIANE BLAKEMORE
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    13 February 2001, pp. 463-486

  • The paper aims to clarify the Relevance theoretic notion of procedural meaning (cf. Blakemore 1987, Wilson & Sperber 1993) through the analysis of but and nevertheless. I show, first, that a procedural analysis is able to account for differences between these expressions that cannot be explained in terms of the speech-act theoretic notion of non-truth conditional indicators, and, second, that these differences show that the conception of procedural meaning as a constraint on contextual effects (cf. Blakemore 1987) is too narrow and must be extended to include all information about the inferential processes involved in utterance interpretation, including context selection.

  • Categories of the Noun Phrase in Jarawara

  • R. M. W. DIXON
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    13 February 2001, pp. 487-510

  • The head of an NP is taken to be that component which determines the categories of the NP as a whole. First impression of an NP in Jarawara (Arawá family, Brazil) involving inalienable possession (e.g. o-mano ‘my arm’) is that there is conflict of criteria concerning what is head. The gender of the NP, for verbal suffix agreement, is determined by the possessor (here Isg prefix o-), suggesting that this should be taken to be head. But the whole NP counts as 3rd person, for verbal prefix agreement, suggesting that the possessed noun (mano ‘arm’) should be taken as head. Furthermore, the NP counts as inanimate. Detailed analysis shows that there is in fact no conflict. All NPs in this language are 3rd person (1st and 2nd persons being confined to head marking within the predicate and functioning as possessors within an NP, not as full NPs). And all NPs involving inalienable possession count as inanimate. The only variable is gender, which is determined by the possessor; plainly, this is the unequivocal head of the NP.

  • What's ‘what’ in French questions

  • BERNADETTE PLUNKETT
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    13 February 2001, pp. 511-530

  • The analysis of French ‘what’ questions poses a number of difficulties. These questions exhibit numerous peculiarities, especially when they involve a subject wh-phrase. It is argued that the anomalous paradigm derives from three independent factors. The first is linked to the general status of matrix subject wh-phrases and the position they occupy at the interface levels. The second relates to the status of que ‘what’ as a phonological clitic. The third is argued to derive from the difference between strong quoi ‘what’ and weak que with respect to specificity. Once the interaction of these factors is taken into account, the unusual paradigm is completely explained.

  • On the distribution of resumptive pronouns and wh-trace in Welsh

  • DAVID WILLIS
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    19 February 2001, pp. 531-573

  • Welsh has generally been analyzed as allowing two types of relative clauses and other A´-constructions, one involving movement leaving a wh-trace, the other involving a resumptive pronoun in situ. In this paper, I argue that, despite the appearance of agreement, which seems to license a null resumptive pronoun, relative clauses formed on a number of syntactic positions (object of periphrastic verb, object of preposition, embedded subject) may involve movement. Both movement and non-movement strategies are argued to be available for some syntactic positions (object of preposition, embedded subject), and separate constraints must therefore be established for the distribution of each. Resumptive pronouns are argued to be subject to a variant of the A´-Disjointness Requirement. For wh-trace, the Welsh evidence is compatible only with an account involving multiple cyclic movement via a VP-external position (SpecAgrOP) as well as SpecCP.

REVIEW ARTICLE

  • Agreement in Chamorro

  • MICHAEL DUKES
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    13 February 2001, pp. 575-588

  • Sandra Chung, The design of agreement: evidence from Chamorro. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 423.

    Sandra Chung's leading contribution to the development of generative analyses of the morphosyntax of Austronesian languages is widely known. This book is the culmination of some two decades of research on Chamorro and is also, as the title suggests, an attempt to embed that body of research within a particular theory of agreement – one which has an explicitly syntactic flavour and which emphasizes the separation of morphology and syntax. Quite apart from the treatment of agreement itself, Chung also discusses a host of fascinating issues surrounding the analysis of Chamorro that have important ramifications for the analysis of languages that are typologically and genetically related to it, including the issue of configurationality and the nature of VSO word order. Additionally, there is extensive discussion of the treatment of wh-movement and the relationship of the Chamorro phenomenon of Wh-Agreement to the constraints on extraction observed in numerous other Austronesian languages and elsewhere. This book, along with the research program it represents, is an important addition to the literature on the less well-studied languages of the world and is obligatory reading for any syntactician with an interest in the cross-linguistic viability of syntactic theory.

REVIEWS

SHORTER NOTICES

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