In this provocative work, Luigi Burzio argues that many common assumptions within stress theory, and phonological theory more generally, are in fact rather arbitrary. He proposes radical departures from recent tradition. In Part I he analyzes stress in the underived English lexicon, arguing that the basic accentual groups or "feet" are not monosyllabic or bisyllabic, as often assumed, but rather bisyllabic or trisyllabic. This analysis brings significant simplifications to other recent theorizing, including the elimination of standard extrametrically and all rules destressing. In Part II...

This is the first extended study written within the framework of phonological government. Following the presentation of main aspects of this theory, the process of vowel-zero alternations is addressed and analyzed together with the idea that phonological processes are determined by principles of Universal Grammar along with parameters that distinguish languages. Vowel-zero alternations are investigated in terms of proper government of empty nuclei, which receive no phonetic interpretation when properly governed. Dr. Charette also considers the constraints on proper government, and argues for...

In this examination of the role of syntax in theories of sentence comprehension, Paul Gorrell argues for a distinct processing component that is devoted to the recovery of syntactic structure and that utilizes the contrasting types of information found within a GovernmentSHBinding grammar. He contrasts the primary and secondary relations in a phrase-structure tree, and shows how this distinction is reflected in the internal structure of the parser, a model that can also predict garden-path phenomena in the processing of verb-final clauses.

All modes of perception (vision, hearing, etc.) are organized into foreground or focus and background constituents. Natural language sentences are no different. This book explores the role of focusing in natural language sentences and the role of this basic cognitive mechanism in explaining sentence stress, meaning and structure. The result is an innovative view of our linguistic competence.

A new contribution to linguistic theory, this book presents a formal framework for the analysis of word structure in human language. It sets forth the network of hypotheses constituting Paradigm Function Morphology, a theory of inflectional form. The book differs from other recent works on the same subject in that it treats inflectional morphology as an autonomous system of principles rather than as a subsystem of syntax or phonology and it draws on evidence from a diverse range of languages in motivating the proposed conception of word structure.

Athapaskan languages are of great linguistic interest due to their intricate morphology. In this clear and insightful book, Keren Rice offers a rich survey of morpheme ordering in Athapaskan verbs, with implications for both synchronic grammar and language change. She argues that verb structure is predictable across Athapaskan languages if certain abstract aspects of meaning are considered. This is the first major comparative study of its type for Athapaskan languages, combining descriptive depth with a contemporary theoretical perspective.

One of the basic premises of the theory of syntax is that clause structures can be minimally identified as containing a verb phrase, playing the role of predicate, and a noun phrase, playing the role of subject. In this study Andrea Moro identifies a new category of copular sentences, namely inverse copular sentences, where the predicative noun phrase occupies the position that is canonically reserved for subjects. In the process, he sheds new light on such classical issues as the distribution and nature of expletives, locality theory and cliticization phenomena.

Morphological productivity has, over the centuries, been a major factor in providing the huge vocabulary of English and remains one of the most contested areas in the study of word formation and structure. This book takes an eclectic approach to the topic, applying the findings for morphology to syntax and phonology. Bringing together the results of twenty years' work in the field, it provides new insights and considers a wide range of linguistic and psycholinguistic evidence.

This study focuses on the cognitive processes involved in creole genesis: relexification, reanalysis, and direct leveling. The role of these processes is documented by a detailed comparison of Haitian creole with its two major contributing languages, French and Fongbe, to illustrate how mechanisms from source languages show themselves in creole. The author examines the input of adult, as opposed to child, speakers and resolves the problems in the three main approaches, universalist, superstratist and substratist, which have been central to the recent debate on creole development.

This study provides a unified analysis of reduplication, a highly complex word formation process, in Afrikaans. Botha concludes that the reduplication principles at work in Afrikaans are not unique to that tongue and, in fact, that they are used by many other languages. Furthermore, Botha shows that neither special conceptual structures nor even standard reduplication procedures are needed to interpret Afrikaans reduplication, thus supporting recent work in cognition by Ray Jackendoff and other scholars. The book's analysis provides concrete illustration of Galilean linguistic inquiry at work...