Creoles and Universal Grammar

Universal grammar specifies the mechanism of language acquisition. It determines the range of grammatical hypothesis that children entertain during language learning and the procedure they use for evaluating input sentences. How universal grammar…

Langs such as Quechua allow free deletion of the Os of transitive Vs (eg, Juzi O rikurka "Jose saw" meaning 'Jose saw him/her/it'). A variable analysis has been proposed which argues that the empty category in O position is a variable & that null…

Guglielmo Cinque is one of the world's leading theoretical syntacticians, and is particularly known for his application of recent theory to the analysis of Italian. This volume brings together ten of Professor Cinque's essays, some of which are…

Reading has universal properties that can be seen across the worlds writing systems. The most important one is the universal language constraint: All writing systems represent spoken languages, a universal with consequences for reading processes.…

It is noted that the standard form of semantic theories for natural language takes some primitive semantic notion as basic & demonstrates how to recursively specify the semantic properties of clauses in terms of this notion. Two ways in which this…

The authors outline the reasons why bringing grammar instruction into the communicative classroom by means of a consciousness raising method might be a better approach to language acquisition than the current rejection to deal with grammar at all in…

Languages that allow a "vacuous" past tense morpheme in complement clauses of attitude verbs are referred to as sequence-of-tense (SOT) languages, & languages that do not are referred to as non-SOT languages. This squib observes that quite…

Presents a typology of reference-tracking systems, including (1) switch functions such as voice alternations, (2) switch references such as marking or inflection, (3) lexical coding agreement and noun class, and (4) pragmatic inference. Questions…

In section 1 we present the Accessibility Hierarchy,in terms of which we state three universalconstraintson Relative Clause Formation.In addition,we present the data in supportof these constraintsand discuss section 2 we propose a…

For much of the 20th century, and sporadically in earlier periods, many grammarians drew, more or less explicitly, structural parallels between the syntax and the phonology. Here I discuss one explicit instance of this, embodied in what I have…