LINGUIST List 2.757

Wed 06 Nov 1991

Disc: Pro-Drop and NP-Order

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1. AVERY D ANDREWS, RE: 2.753 Pro-drop and NP Order
2. , Re: 2.753 Pro-drop and NP Order

Message 1: RE: 2.753 Pro-drop and NP Order

There's an article on subjectless sentences in English in a
recent issue of Language and Memory, advocated an account in
terms of metrical structure (apologies for the vague reference --
it's a long way back to the library where I noticed this)
Avery Andrews (Avery.Andrewsanu.edu.au)

Message 2: Re: 2.753 Pro-drop and NP Order

Regarding order of multiple adjectives in English NPs, see a recent
article:
Robertson, John S. A semantic motivation for the word order of the
English noun phrase and the English verb phrase, Semiotica 86-1/2
(1991), 57-84. The key parameter is the Jakobsonian dichotomy
"immediate" vs. "mediated." Robertson says that this dichotomy
is what underlies Greenberg's 28th universal: I f both the
derivation and inflection follow the root, or if they both
precede the root, the derivation is always between the root and
the inflection." Derivation is immediate and affective, and hence
changes the basic character of the root itself; inflection is mediational
and signals the interpreter to view the root relationally.
 In "these five white houses", "white" has an immediate relationship
the the head (it is partitive vis-a-vis the head) while "these" "is not
proper to the houses at all." Robertson also draws on Peircian notions
of icon and index.
Jeff Turley