The modal auxiliary should, when it is used to express ‘probability’, is generally considered as a weaker equivalent of must (see for instance Leech & Svartvik, 1975: 131 and Hornby, 1962: 223). Although this informal assumption contains a fair degree of truth, this paper will show first, that it requires qualification and secondly, that it gains strength once it has been qualified. In other words, there is more truth in the assumption than is suspected by its casual users.

The method I will use is to consider the compatibilities between must and should and their environment. Though the relevant kind of environment cannot be defined in a purely syntactic way, it can be accurately specified in simple semantic terms, many of which have syntactic correlates. Verbal contexts are generally available but situational contexts will occasionally have to be used. It will then appear that the diversity of situational contexts can be reduced to very few elementary relations.

I. In a recent article in this journal, Allerton (1978) calls into question the status of a transformational rule - usually called Dative Movement - which relates sentences like: (1) (a) Jim gave a present to Margaret. (b) Jim bought a drink for Margaret. to sentences where the prepositions to/for are not present, and where Margaret immediately follows the verb: (2) (a) Jim gave Margaret a present. (b) Jim bought Margaret a drink.

His argument is based in particular on the observation of those construtions involving the preposition for.

I. A pervasive, though not always explicit assumption of transformational grammar has been that syntactic and phonological rules form separate, discrete units in the organization of grammar; that phonological rules are not ordered among syntactic transformations, but rather apply in a block at the end of the syntactic derivation.1 Chomsky and Halle (1968) go even further in this separation, arguing that the surface structure is not the immediate input to the phonological component, but first undergoes certain ‘readjustment rules’, such as insertion of word boundaries. I have argued elsewhere (Kaisse, 1977) that this added step is unnecessary, and that there are in fact certain inter-word phonological processes that require the full information present in the labeled bracketing of the surface structure. However, my proposal is not a radical departure from the standard theory, in that it remains an INTERFACE model, in line with that proposed in Pullum and Zwicky (to appear). The claim remains that all syntactic rules apply before all phonological rules. In the case of word-internal phonological rules this is perhaps not crucial, but for rules of external sandhi, it is very important, both empirically and theoretically. For if we give up the requirement that no phonological rule apply during a syntactic derivation, we greatly increase the power of our theory of grammar and give up the ability to predict on a universal basis, the order of application of two rules, one phonological and the other syntactic.

I. SOUNDS IN MODERN HEBREW Hebrew shorashim – the triliteral roots – have already been analysed from many points of view, for example in Morgenbrod & Serifi (1976, 1977, 1978). The aim of this article is an examination of the sound structure of shorashim.

In general we can divide the consonants which form the shorashim into two different types; concerning (a) the manner of articulation (e.g. plosives, nasals, etc.); and (b) the place of articulation (e.g. bilabials, labiodentals, etc.).

In this study we have concentrated on position of articulation and ignore manner of articulation.

In Figure I the consonants forming the shorashim are related to the different kinds of sounds according to Wendt (1961).

In order to investigate the relationship between the sounds it is convenient to establish so-called compound matrices with a computer. All computation was done by a program in COBOL running on the SIEMENS System 4004. As material for our analysis we took 2443 shorashim from the sources Barkaly (1972) and Even-Shoshan (1972).

Derbyshire and Pullum (1981) report on the evidence they have accumulated during the past two years showing the likely existence of twelve languages with object-initial basic order (OVS or OSV). Such languages are contrary to what had been generally predicted in the literature on word order typology until 1977. All twelve languages are found in what might broadly be termed the Amazon basin of South America. Seven of the eight OVS languages belong to the Carib family: Apalai, Arekuna/Taulipang, Bacairi, Hianacoto-Umaua, Hixkaryana, Makúsi, and Panare. There is not much descriptive linguistic material available for any of these languages, other than Hixkaryana. What there is can be found listed in Derbyshire and Pullum (1979).

Introduction This article describes aspects of the semantics of Japanese verbs of dress, first from a contrastive standpoint vis-à-vis English, and subsequently in terms of their position within the structure of the vocabulary of Japanese. It is hoped that the treatment may draw attention to the semantic interest of this area of the vocabulary in different languages, and to the importance of a hitherto little-described sense relation of oppositeness.

In a recent article on the indivisibility of ‘words’ (Sampson, 1979), Geoffrey Sampson, in arguing against the semantic decomposition of ‘vocabulary items’, concludes with a claim against lexical decomposability of derived items such as Nixonite, etc. One can hardly take issue, I think, with his argument against the purely semantic decomposition of lexical primes; however, it does not follow from this that the lexicon is characterized by unproductive, irregular rules or a total absence thereof: …it seems factually untrue that rules of derivational morphology (such as the rule for forming nouns in -ite) can be assimilated to semantically regular, productive ‘rules of grammar’ such as the rule for pluralizing nouns; the former rules are typically not fully productive, and the meanings of the words produced are not in general predictable (46).

I. Like so many linguistic terms, the term syllable has been used in many different senses, and theoretical distinctions have been made, aimed at avoiding confusion. There is hardly any need to remind the reader of Pike's distinction between PHONETIC and PHONEMIC syllables: ‘the phonetic syllables must be analyzed into the structural phonemic syllables’ (Pike, 1947: 90). Although obviously beneficial, this division still leaves considerable room for confusion, both on the phonetic and on the phonological side. On the phonological side the syllable can be thought of as a unit of organization of smaller phonological units (cf. e.g. Bell (1977), Bell & Hooper (1978)) or as a unit defining the scope or environment for phonological processes, or as accounting for regularities of quantity and tonality (cf. e.g. Pike (1947: 90), and Hooper (1972)). On the phonetic side there are at least two approaches to the syllable. It has been looked on as defining units in speech production (cf. Stetson (1951), Catford (1977: 89–90)) or as a means of describing sonority variation in the phonetic signal (cf. e.g. Jespersen (1949/1934: 118–121)). This latter aspect relates to the perception of the linguistic signal by speakers and to the acoustic buildup of the phonetic medium. Finally, there are those who deny the usefulness of the concept altogether.

To avoid the triviality of mere taxonomy in which languages are classified by such arbitrary criteria as ‘is/is not tonal’, ‘does/does not have unbounded movement rules’, ‘has prefixes/suffixes’, etc., language typology needs to be able to make implicational statements of the sort usually associated with the name of Greenberg.1 For instance, one wants to be able to say of a language not only that it is VSO, but also that it THEREFORE will have prepositions, will place modifying adjectives after rather than before the noun, will put titles before proper names, and so on. Likewise, if a language has the word-order SOV, then an interesting typology should allow one to predict that it will ipso facto be postpositional, put attributive adjectives before the noun, etc.

The present paper1 will be concerned with some descriptive and theoretical issues connected with Glide Formation (GF) and Stress Placement (StrP) as well as with the interplay of these rules in the ‘phonological component’ of Modern Greek (MG). These problems have recently been discussed by Irene Warburton whose article (1976) will serve as a point of reference.

Warburton's paper consists of two major parts of rather unequal strength. The first section (‘The relationship between stress and vowel length’, 260–268) makes a good case against attempts to condition the MG stress rule(s) phonologically by setting up never-surfacing distinctions of vowel length. It is also meritorious plea for the view that morphological conditioning ‘does not necessarily introduce irregularity in the language’ (Warburton, 259), as far as the rule makes reference to ‘a natural class of items… that can be subsumed wihin a single morphological feature (e.g. Past, Plural, etc.) that is independently available’ (l.c.).

The aim of this paper is to justify the use of syntactic features, to show how they relate to semantic features and how they operate in syntax and morphology. 1 Particular stress is laid on the elimination of redundant features. First we shall review the literature, to show why syntactic features should require justification. Then, as an illustration, we shall investigate the feature of animacy in Russian in all components of the grammar in which it has a rôle.

1. Efforts to limit the power of transformations, and thereby reduce the class of possible grammars, have been concentrated in two areas: the conditions which restrict the application of the transformational rules, and the examination of the consequences of placing the burden of description on the non-transformational components of the grammar. Recent work on the non-transformational components has led to some interesting conclusions about how this power can be reduced. An article by Bresnan (1978) is a good example of this line of research. She cites a number of cases where transferring the burden of description from the transformational component to the lexicon and semantic interpretive components not only leads to a simplification in the from of the transformational rules, but also captures generalizations not adequately explained by transformations.

The study of intonation has gone through phases in which it has been fashionable to ascribe the meaning of intonation to one particular sort of function.1 Most traditionally that function has been grammatical (see, e.g., the earliest British attempts at intonation analysis (e.g. Butler, 1634) and many recent textbooks on English language teaching). More recently (i.e. since the second world war), speakers' attitude has often been taken as most important (e.g. Pike, 1945; Kingdon, 1958). In the light of current fashion, the discourse function is often seen as most important (e.g. Brazil,, 1975, 1978; Pilch, 1977).I argue in this article that intonation operates with its own set of meanings which are of higher abstraction than those of grammar, attitude or discourse; and that it is only at a lower level that these meanings of higher abstraction become relevant to one or more of these functions (in so far as the functions can in any case be clearly separated). Such a hypothesis is relevant to the question of how intonation is acquired by children (where the real problem for investigators has always been WHAT exactly is being acquired). It is also important to questions of cross-dialectal intonational translation (whether across social or regional boundaries) and also to possible intonation universals.

Chomsky (1977) argues that all constructions that apparently involve unbounded deletion rules obeying island constraints in fact involve successive cyclic wh-movement followed by deletion in COMP. Among the relevant constructions are English equatives. There is no direct evidence that they involve wh-movement. Polish equatives, however, often show quite clear evidence of the operation of wh-movement. It might be thought, then, that they provide some evidence for Chomsky's position. In this paper, I will argue that this is not in fact the case. I will argue that Polish equatives often involve not only wh-movement but deletion in S as well. I will then argue that they sometimes involve just deletion. Finally, I will argue that this deletion is unbounded and subject to island constraints. Clearly, if this is correct, Polish equatives, far from providing support for Chomsky' position, in fact provide important evidence against it.

In recently proposed analyses of the causee's case (Aissen, 1974; Cole, 1976; Comrie, 1976) it has been generally assumed that: (a) causatives are underlyingly bisentential with a structure such as s[X cause s[Y to do something (run, hit, jog, … ]s]s; (b) the causative merger with its complement verb erases the grammatical relation of the complement subject; and (c) the case of the derived NP (i.e. the causee) emerging from the complement subject is determined by some universal grammatical principles of higher order.1 On the basis of a cross-language study, Comrie (1976a), for example, has suggested that the case of the causee follows from two main syntactic principles: the Doubling constraint and the Case Hierarchy (CH). The doubling constraint prevents the primary subject and object relations from duplicating in simple structures. The case hierarchy, which feeds on the doubling constraint, demotes the causee to Direct, Indirect, or Oblique Object (DO, IO, OO) position with each increase in the number of complement arguments of the causative construction. Thus if the complement clause is without an object, the causee positions itself as DO, the highest unoccupied position on the hierarchy. If the complement DO is already present the causee moves to IO, and if both DO and IO positions are filled, the causee demotes to OO NP whose nature under CH is unspecified. Turkish supposedly represents a paradigm of this operation.

INTRODUCTION In a recent paper, Botha (1976) suggests that the analysis of linguistic argumentation is a ‘non-normal’ thing for linguists to do. ‘Normally’, he maintains, ‘linguists are oriented towards uncovering the nature of human language, and not the nature of linguistic science.’ Botha (1976: 3) even goes so far as to claim that the analysis of a form of argumentation is not a sort of linguistic analysis; it is instead a form of philosophical analysis. Some philosophers would probably disagree here with Botha and say that philosophical analysis is a sort of linguistic analysis. I am thinking here of Wittgenstein, for example, and the so-called philosophers of language who accept the view that the business of philosophy is to deal with the question of how words mean what they mean, etc., rather than to offer a comprehensive theory of the universe. It is difficult to draw a line of demarcation between a discipline proper and the study of the methodological underpinnings of that discipline, which I am not sure is essential anyway. My point is that a certain amount of self-criticism and awareness of the status of theoretical concepts and arguments can do linguists no harm.

Most phonologists regard the syllable as a unit of language. In recent years, partly in reaction to Chomsky's and Halle's neglect of it in The sound pattern of English, much work has been done to incorporate the syllable into phonological theory (Anderson & Jones, 1974; Bailey, 1978; Hoard, 1971; Hooper, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1978; Kahn, 1976; Pulgram, 1970; Rudes, 1977; Vennemann, 1972).

Syllable theories have been based on evidence from phonetics, phonological processes, prosody, language change, child language acquisition, and language universals. The purpose of this experimental study is (a) to contribute empirical evidence about the nature of the syllable from native speakers' actual syllabifications of words and (b) to determine how this evidence reflects on the syllable theories already proposed.

Syllable studies have focused on two major questions: (1) what is the structure of the syllable and (2) how are words divided into syllables (syllabified). These questions are obviously related, and the answers to each have implications for the other. This study was designed to elicit data directly addressing both questions.

It is usually assumed that English has two aspects, the perfect and the progressive. I would like to suggest, however, that there are in English not two but three aspects – the perfect, the progressive and the passive.

The most common description of the (actional) passive is one which derives sentences containing be+ past participle from an underlying transitive active structure. In a description of this kind there are several defects of a theoretical nature which reveal themselves in three main areas. The first problem area is the set of verbs which are apparently transitive but which nevertheless do not passivize, for example in English have, suit, resemble, in German haben ‘have’, überkommen ‘come over’, erfordern ‘require’ (see Steube & Walther, 1972: 20–22).