Twenty-one articles from the 31st LSRL investigate cutting-edge issues and interfaces across phonology, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, semantics, and syntax in multiple dialects of such Romance languages as Catalan, French, Creole French, and Spanish, both old and modern. Research in Romance phonology moves from the quantitative and synchronic to cover issues of diachrony and Optimality theory. Work within pragmatics and sociolinguistics also explores the synchronic/diachronic link while topicalizing such issues as change of non-pro-drop Swiss French toward pro-drop status, scalar implicatures, speech acts, word order, and simplification in contexts of language contact. Finally, debates in linguistic theory are resumed in the work on syntax and semantics within both a Minimalist perspective and an Optimality framework. How do Catalan and French children acquire AGR and TNS? Can Basque Spanish be compared to topic-oriented Chinese? If Spanish preverbal subjects occur in an A-position, can Spanish no longer be compared to Greek?Table of contentsIntroduction and acknowledgment Rafael Núñez-Cedeño, Luis López and Richard Cameron vii Phonology and morphology Pronominal clitics in Picard revisited Julie Auger 3 Spanish /s/:: A different story from beginning (initial) to end (final) Esther L. Brown and Rena Torres Cacoullos 21 Consonant intrusion in heterosyllabic cosonant-liquid clusters in Old Spanish and Old French:: An Optimality theoretical account Fernando Martínez-Gil 39 A constraint interaction theory of Italian raddoppiamento Mario Saltarelli 59 Pragmatics and sociolinguistics Ground/Focus: A perspective from French Claire Beyssade, Jean-Marie Marandin and Annie Rialland 83 The subject clitics of European Conversational French:: Morphologization, grammatical change, semantic change, and changein progress Bonnie Fonseca-Greber and Linda R. Waugh 99 A scalar propositional negative polarity item in Spanish Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach and Scott A. Schwenter 119 A pragmatic analysis of Imperfect Conditionals Michela Ippolito 133 Indirect objects in ditransitive constructions in Brazilian Portuguese H.M.M.-L. Salles and Marta P. Scherre 151 Pragmatic variation in Spanish:: External request modifications in Peninsular and Uruguayan Spanish Rosina Márquez Reiter 167 Clitic simplification in a contact variety of Spanish:: Third person accusative pronouns in the Mexican-American community of Houston N. Ariana Mrak 181 The expression of topic in spoken Spanish:: An empirical study Francisco Ocampo 195 An adaptive approach to noun gender in New York contact Spanish Ricardo Otheguy and Naomi Lapidus 209 Syntax Properties of the double object construction in Spanish Tonia Bleam 233 Spanish perception verbs and sequence of tenses:: Aktionsart effects Alicia Cipria 253 Defaults and competition in the acquisition of functional categories in Catalan and French Lisa Davidson and Géraldine Légendre 273 Constraints on the meanings of Bare Nouns Viviane Deprez 291 Null objects revisited Jon A. Franco and Alazne Landa 311 Auxiliary choice and pronominal verb constructions: The case of the passé surcomposé Kate Paesani 327 The lexical preverbal subject in a Romance Null Subject Language:: Where are thou? Margarita Suñer 341 Intervention effects in the French wh-in-situ construction:: Syntax or interpretation? Maria Luisa Zubizarreta 359 Index