This volume (the first of a two-volume set) contains articles originally published between 1973 and 1987 around a unified theme. Each article has an empirical focus on one or more local syntactic processes. While most of the articles were written to support theoretical positions in terms of debates that have since been settled or eclipsed, these studies linguistically situate many paradigms of interest and support still defensible analyses for a variety of constructions often treated only schematically in current literature. Several contain some first formulations of arguments and claims still widely in use. Though formulated in terms of local transformations, the properties and paradigms discussed thus remain relevant for determining optimal grammatical and lexical characterizations of individual members of functional categories.