A widely held position in the literature on verbal meaning is that the lexical-semantic representation of verbs involves complex event structures with semantic primitives like CAUSE and BECOME (e.g. Dowty 1979). A growing number of recent works on predicate decomposition have shown that there is a close correlation between the semantics of event structure and the syntax (e.g. Hale & Keyser 1993, Harley 1995, Travis 2000, van Hout 2000, Ramchand 2003, 2007). This article presents an additional empirical argument for the view that there is a direct mapping between semantic decomposition of predicates and the (morpho)syntax by developing an explicit analysis of the semantics and syntax of the verbal suffix -kan in Standard Indonesian. We argue that -kan is a morphological reflex of the RESULT head, the semantics of which gives rise to a causative interpretation. By treating -kan as being sensitive to a syntactic configuration involving a result state, the current analysis not only provides important empirical support for the event decomposition of predicates in the syntax but also leads to a unified semantic and syntactic account of -kan, which captures straightforwardly distributional properties of the suffix.

Data from dual pronoun systems in Australian languages is used to show the pragmatic basis for a cycle of pronoun creation—reduced pronouns from free forms and free from reduced—and the motivation to maintain both types in a linguistic system. Free pronouns become positionally restricted reduced forms by association of clause-initial position with discourse prominence (Swartz 1988, Choi 1999). The same pragmatic motivations result in the creation of new free pronouns, and the divergence of free and reduced pronouns with respect to ergative case marking. Examples of languages at different stages of the cycle include Garrwa (one set of free pronouns, with a strong preference for second position); Djambarrpuyngu and Gupapuyngu (two sets of pronouns transparently related in form and in complementary distribution); Ritharrngu, Djinang, and Djinba (two sets of pronouns transparently related in form but in which the reduced pronouns are becoming obligatory); Warlpiri (two sets of pronouns, which diverge in form, and the reduced set is obligatory); and Warumungu (one set of reduced pronouns, indicating how new free pronouns might emerge based on information-packaging principles). The creation of free pronouns from reduced pronouns argues against strict unidirectionality of change.

Taking stock. Nordlinger & Sadler 2004 (NS04) brought nominal tense/aspect/mood (TAM) markers across languages to the attention of the linguistic community and raised many important questions about noun-phrase temporality, lexical categories, and other research areas. In the theoretical literature on noun-phrase temporality, the idea that tense might be a category of noun phrases was considered as early as Enç 1981. In her analysis of the temporal interpretation of noun phrases, Enç (1981:41–45) briefly entertains the possibility of noun phrases being interpreted by nominal tense operators that locate the time relative to which a noun phrase is interpreted (i.e. Tonhauser 2007's (T07) noun-phrase time tnp) relative to the utterance time. Enç ultimately rejects the proposal since nominal tense operators ‘do not correspond to tense morphemes’ (1981:44), that is, do not have overt morphological counterparts, but also because an analysis according to which the noun-phrase time is contextually determined is more adequate. The primary focus of subsequent literature on noun-phrase temporality was to identify structural, semantic, and pragmatic constraints on the location of the noun-phrase time (e.g. Enç 1986, Musan 1995, 1999, Demirdache 1997, Tonhauser 2002). In the context of this research, the empirical domain of which is English, German, and St‘át'imcets, that is, languages that do not have nominal temporal markers, N&S's claim that there are languages with nominal tenses is exciting because these languages would provide overt evidence for Enç‘s nominal tense operators and promise insight into the way that the noun-phrase time is located.

It is generally assumed that noun-noun compounds in English are stressed on the left-hand member (e.g. cóurtroom, watchmaker). However, there is a large amount of variation in stress assignment (e.g. silk tíe, Madison Ávenue, singer-sóngwriter) whose significance and sources are largely unaccounted for in the literature. This article presents a study in which three kinds of factors held to play a role in compound stress assignment are tested: argument structure, lexicalization, and semantics. The analysis of 4,353 noun-noun compounds extracted from the Boston University Radio Speech Corpus shows that there is indeed a considerable amount of variation in stress assignment. Overall, semantics turns out to have the strongest effect on compound stress assignment, whereas an approach relying on argument structure is much less successful in predicting compound stress. The article presents for the first time large-scale empirical evidence for the assumption that lexicalization has an effect on compound stress assignment. The article also makes a methodological contribution to the debate in showing that (and how) corpus-based studies using acoustic measurements can shed new light on the issue of variable compound stress.

The object of inquiry in linguistics is the human ability to acquire and use a natural language, and the goal of linguistic theory is an explicit characterization of that ability. Looking at the communicative abilities of other species, it becomes clear that our linguistic ability is specific to our species, undoubtedly a product of our biology. But how do we go about determining the specifics of this Language faculty? There are two primary ways in which we infer the nature of Language from the properties of individual languages: arguments from the POVERTY OF THE STIMULUS, and the search for universals that characterize every natural language. Arguments of the first sort are not easy to construct (though not as difficult as sometimes suggested), and apply only to a tiny part of Language as a whole. Arguments from universals or typological generalizations are also quite problematic. In phonology, morphology, and syntax, factors of historical development, functional underpinnings, and limitations of the learning situation, among others, conspire to compromise the explanatory value of arguments from observed crosslinguistic regularities. Confounding the situation is the likelihood that properties found across languages as a consequence of such external forces have been incorporated into the Language faculty evolutionarily through the BALDWIN EFFECT. The conflict between the biologically based specificity of the human Language faculty and the difficulty of establishing most of its properties in a secure way cannot, however, be avoided by ignoring or denying the reality of either of its poles.

William Gamwell Moulton, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Germanic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University, passed away on June 2, 2000, in Exeter, New Hampshire, at the age of eighty-six. Professor Moulton served as a member of the executive committee of the Linguistic Society of America, as well as its vice president, and, in 1967, its president.

To the memory of my wife the metaphysician

The word ICON (< L icon, < Gk ∊iκώv ‘likeness, image, portrait, similitude, semblance‘) has entered the parlance of linguists and philosophers as a technical term, not to speak of anthropologists and other students of culture, especially those who have some cognizance of the theory of signs (semiotics) and of its modern founder, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). In Peirce's sign theory an icon is a member of his most well-known trichotomy of icon/index/symbol, by which he meant to designate the mutable relations between a SIGN and its OBJECT. Peirce's earliest published mention of this trichotomy is from 1885 (EP 1:225).