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Abstract. Common versions of event semantics do not naturally explain the obligatory narrow scope of existential quantification over events, or the typically event-oriented modification by adverbials. We argue that these linguistic properties reflect a distinction between overt arguments and purely semantic slots like the event argument. The distinction is naturally captured in Abstract Categorial Grammar (ACG) [1, 2, 3, 4], which manipulates pairs of forms and meanings, a.k.a. linguistic signs. The sign’s pheno-type defines syntactic arguments and the sign’s semantic type standardly defines semantic arguments. Both these concrete types are standardly derived by induction on the structure of one abstract type types. We assume that semantic event arguments are only introduced by the (basic) result type of the verb’s abstract type, whose pheno-level type is standardly a string. Consequently semantic event arguments lack a correlate in the verb’s pheno-type. Both narrow-scope existential quantification over events and the orientation of event modifiers follow rigorously from this assumption. Based

The phase-based approach to grammatical derivation and one rooted in the Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) formalism share the idea that the derivation of a complex sentence is divided into separate derivations of local domains. These approaches differ, however, in their treatment of syntactic dependencies spanning across such local domains. Under the phase approach, operations in a higher domain can access the edge of a lower domain in accordance with the Phase Impenetrability Condition. In TAG, one local domain can be inserted within another under the adjoining operation. This difference has important consequences in how the locality properties of syntactic dependencies are explained. In this paper, I systematically compare the explanations for locality effects under phases and TAG. I explore the degree to which the explanations offered by these different approaches generalize across Aand A ′-movement, across different structural contexts, and across the phenomena of displacement and agreement, and whether such generalization is empirically warranted in each case.

As is well known, Japanese zibun contrasts with English reflexives in several ways. First, zibun is subject oriented. Its antecedent is typically a subject, whereas English reflexives do not have such restriction. 1 Compare (1a) and (1b). (1) a. Takashii-ga jooshij-ni zibuni/*j-o suisenshita

The paper presents an analysis of the noun phrase in Hawrami. Important evidence for the analysis comes from concord between the Izafe morpheme and other functional categories, including definiteness, number, possessive and demonstrative. The Izafe is an inflection, characteristic of the Iranian languages, which marks nouns and NPs modified by adjectives or DPs. It is argued that its role is that of breaking the symmetry between two merged categories neither of which selects the other, by making one of them the head. This property the Izafe shares with other ‘linking morphemes’, including English of. It is argued that there are two Izafe morphemes in Hawrami, one is a pure linking morpheme, the other is a determiner. Hawrami is a Kurdish (Northwestern Iranian) language (or dialect) spoken in a region stretching across the border of Northern Iraq and Iran. 1 The number of speakers is unknown, but is probably less than 100,000, possibly less than 50,000. We have investigated the language with the help of Koresh Rafie, a native speaker of Hawrami, coming from the

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this paper, but they are essentially the reasons found in Larson 1988, Hale 1989, and Hale and Keyset 1991

ly provides reasonable summaries of the essays, it doesn't come close to suggesting applications of the theoretical work to AI. It may well be that computer scientists ought to be famil- iar with the essays in the book. Most of the essays are, after all, classics. But it is pedagogically naive to think that one can drop, for example, Davidson's "Truth and Meaning" in the lap of a computer scientist and suppose that it suggests anything in the way of a research program. Another part of the problem is that the volume has been limited to papers that originally appeared in books or journals published by D. Reidel. This is unfortunate, for a number of sections of the book could have been greatly strengthened with the addition of material pub- lished elsewhere. Now it may be that the editors intended to provide something like "D. Reidel's Greatest Hits", but such a strategy seems to me misguided. There is nothing intrinsically interesting about the fact that a paper was first published in a

Donald Davidson's classic argument that action sentences involve an event place in their argument structure receives important evidence from the overt syntax of Chinese genitive agent constructions, possessive object constructions, and sentences with expressions of event quantification that apparently occupy the syntactic position of objectual modifiers. These constructions present syntax-semantic mismatches that are resolved by an analysis according to which the main predicate has moved from its D-Structure position into the position of an abstract higher "light verb". This

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