This study investigates the properties of several ancient syllabic and linear segmental scripts to make explicit the aspects of linguistic knowledge they attempt to represent. Some recent experimental work suggests that nonliterate speakers do not have segmental knowledge and that only syllabic… read more
This investigation of complex verb formation seeks to identify and clarify the way(s) in which a base verb becomes 'complex'. The author carefully considers both the syntactic and the morphological side of this question, and in doing so brings a wealth of data from very diverse languages to bear on… read more
Several issues of theoretical, typological, and historical interest are investigated. Conjugated infinitives (those with subject person agreement) are relatively rare but sufficiently well documented as to prompt some linguists to question the efficacy of the wordnonfinite. Moreover, the… read more
Although conjugated infinitives (CIs) occur in languages as diverse as Portuguese, Welsh, Hungarian, and West Greenlandic, the prototypical infinitive is nonfinite in the traditional sense: it has no subject person agreement. This paper argues that CIs are special in the sense that they cannot… read more
The history of deontic expressions in several languages reveals some naturalness in (a) constructions involving BE plus infinitive/gerundial, (b) thematic object initially surfacing in the nom, (c) reanalysis via case accommodation in neuters to a structure in which the thematic object surfaces in… read more
SUMMARY The Latin gerundive has three distinctive properties: (i) agreement with thematic object; (ii) ungrammaticality of lexical thematic subject; and (iii) inability to take both a specifier (determiner) and a complement while infinitives can have both. A case- theoretic account within the… read more
SUMMARY A reexamination of a small portion of the morphological evidence reveals that there were no fewer than 100 hybrid derivatives (of the type French suffix on native base) prior to 1450 and at least 64 before 1400. Given that most of the texts are literary, those are fairly high numbers.… read more
SUMMARY Formal (syntactic, distributional) and functional evidence are presented that do did not develop directly from a lexical (causative) verb to a dummy tense-carrier (member of INFL Phrase), but first became an aspectual auxiliary on a par with have and be. Relying on the historical principle… read more
