Abstract:The article illustrates some of the salient features of Government Phonology (GP) 2.0 by axiomatising (a subclass of) the set of possible Putonghua forms.We show that a phonological theory can profit by assuming that phonological representations are hierarchical, just like syntactic representations. A structural relation of c++command, a relative of the well-known c-command, is used heavily. The similarity with syntax is further underlined by the introduction of a phonological Binding Theory: illicit representations are prohibited by the LUxI Principles, the phonological counterpart of Principles A, B and C.

A standard view in the semantics of natural language is that first-order predicate logic is not adequate for giving an account of natural language. This chapter shows that on a reasonable formalization of the proposed formal language, this is not the case. Ludlow and Živanović show that their formal system has sufficient expressive power, is compositional in the relevant sense, and the structures are isomorphic to those of natural language. They then discuss a particular version of generative linguistics—the minimalist program—and show how their approach can be integrated into the Minimalist Program, and how that integration can yield fruitful insights for linguistic theory.

The paper deals with the distribution of conjunctive and prepositional comparative structures in Slovenian. They are introduced by the complementiser kot and the preposition od, respectively. Comparative structures are categorised along three dimensions: (i) the morphological environment of the comparative morpheme (yielding amount and quality comparatives); (ii) the syntactic environment of the comparative morpheme (eight syntactic environments are discussed: (nominative) subject, (accusative) direct object, (dative) indirect object, prepositional object, locative adverbial, temporal adverbial, some other adverbial, and predicate); (iii) the syntactic environment (the same environments as above are discussed) of the associate (the non-elided phrase in the comparative complement is the remnant; its counterpart with the same grammatical function in the matrix clause is the associate). The comparison of conjunctive and prepositional comparatives shows that the distribution of the latter is more restricted and also exhibits more inter-speaker variation than the former. Conjunctive comparatives are acceptable in virtually all combinations of the above-mentioned parameters, the only exception being quality comparatives withan adverbial or predicate associate where the comparative morpheme is embedded in the associate. The only absolute generalisation that can be made about prepositional comparatives is that the associate must be either a subject or a direct object; all other generalisations are merely tendencies.

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An alternative formal language (L**) is constructed that better mirrors the structure of natural language (for example, by treating numerical expressions as predicates and thereby divorcing cardinality and quantification). It is shown how directional entailingness can be understood in terms of polarity, and how the properties of generalized quantifier theory can be cashed out within the formal structures of the new formal language.