o. Theoretical linguistics is a term not very often used in Soviet Linguistics. The terms 'structural linguistics', 'mathematical linguistics', 'applied lin- guistics' (which, incidentally, has another meaning here than in other parts of the world) all may cover theoretical work in linguistics. In older days serious theoretical work was done under the heading 'machine translation'. Very often the need for a special term for theoretically oriented studies in linguistics does not even arise. Does this mean that there is no real theoretical linguistics in the Soviet Union? This would be, of...

In almost all principled accounts of questions questions are related to the corresponding answers. Zellig Harris (Harris 1978:1), for example, maintains that" ... all interrogative sentences can be derived, by means of the independently established transformations of the language, from sentences which assert that someone is asking about a disjunction of statements which are the relevant possible answers to that interroga tive." This amounts to the claim that a yes-no question such as Will John stay? is derived from I ask you whether John will stay and a wh question such as Who came is derived...