Main description:
Two threads run through this collection of 22 papers by students and colleagues of James D. McCawley. The first is a commitment to deep reflection on the direction of linguistic study, sometimes resulting in challenges to the writings of major figures or new appreciations, sometimes questioning our assumptions about the organization of linguistic information in the mind. The second thread is a shared sense of the requirements for the rigor of a good linguistic argument, that its presentation be thoroughgoing, straightforward and clearly made. There is a strong emphasis on testing the 'party line' with the widest possible range of languages and the strongest possible set of linguistic tests. Demonstrating bugs and strategizing over the choice between competing analyses is not enough. The completion of an argument lies in constructing a better alternative.
Table of contents:
- Preface
- Japanese Modals are Conditionals
- The Cairene Arabic Verb Without Form Classes
- The Transition from Oral to Written Competence
- Two Types of 'World-Greating' Predicates
- Tojolabal (Mayan) Kinterms and the Theory of Markedness or a Near Triumph of the Feminie Gender
- Tone and Accent in Llogoori
- Purpose Infinitives and Their Relatives
- A Semantic Etymology
- Are Conditionals Topics? The Japanese Case
- Gender and Sex in Standard Modern greek Pet Names
- Philosophical Speculation and Cognitive Science Comments of William Lycan's Logical Form inNatural Language
- Symmetric Relations
- The Korean Precursors of Generative Phonology
- Why Grammars are Not Monolithic
- On Extracting from Asymmetrical Structures
- The Markedness of Plurality
- Phantom Succesors and the French FAIRE PAR Connstruction
- A Paper on Yiddish for James D. McCawley
- Survival of the Positive
- Lexical Phonology and Japanese Vowel Devoicing
- First He Called Her a Philologist and Then She Insulted Him
- Jottings on Adpositions, Case Inflections, Government, and Agreement
- Indices
Two threads run through this collection of 22 papers by students and colleagues of James D. McCawley. The first is a commitment to deep reflection on the direction of linguistic study, sometimes resulting in challenges to the writings of major figures or new appreciations, sometimes questioning our assumptions about the organization of linguistic information in the mind. The second thread is a shared sense of the requirements for the rigor of a good linguistic argument, that its presentation be thoroughgoing, straightforward and clearly made. There is a strong emphasis on testing the 'party line' with the widest possible range of languages and the strongest possible set of linguistic tests. Demonstrating bugs and strategizing over the choice between competing analyses is not enough. The completion of an argument lies in constructing a better alternative.
Table of contents:
- Preface
- Japanese Modals are Conditionals
- The Cairene Arabic Verb Without Form Classes
- The Transition from Oral to Written Competence
- Two Types of 'World-Greating' Predicates
- Tojolabal (Mayan) Kinterms and the Theory of Markedness or a Near Triumph of the Feminie Gender
- Tone and Accent in Llogoori
- Purpose Infinitives and Their Relatives
- A Semantic Etymology
- Are Conditionals Topics? The Japanese Case
- Gender and Sex in Standard Modern greek Pet Names
- Philosophical Speculation and Cognitive Science Comments of William Lycan's Logical Form inNatural Language
- Symmetric Relations
- The Korean Precursors of Generative Phonology
- Why Grammars are Not Monolithic
- On Extracting from Asymmetrical Structures
- The Markedness of Plurality
- Phantom Succesors and the French FAIRE PAR Connstruction
- A Paper on Yiddish for James D. McCawley
- Survival of the Positive
- Lexical Phonology and Japanese Vowel Devoicing
- First He Called Her a Philologist and Then She Insulted Him
- Jottings on Adpositions, Case Inflections, Government, and Agreement
- Indices