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This chapter introduces the volume by outlining the general themes explored and describing the structure of the book. The chapters all address aspects of the same basic research programme: determining the division of labour between the lexicon, (morpho)syntax, and compositional semantics in the encoding of what can broadly be construed as event structure, encompassing event participants and the temporal properties associated with the linguistic representation of events.

This chapter provides a brief overview of the nature and structure of the symbolic unit, as developed in constructional accounts of the linguistic system in cognitive linguistics. In LCCM Theory, the symbolic unit is the representation type that is held to populate the linguistic system, and hence crucial to the account of lexical representation and semantic composition developed.

How much of variations in verbal meaning, aspectual (Aktionsart) interpretation, and thematic information are actually contributed by the syntactic structure itself? And if all this information can be derived in the syntax, what is the role of the lexical representation of the verb? The editors' aim in this volume is the construction of a theory of the lexicon–syntax connection that will address these questions. Approaches to this issue can be roughly divided into two: the ‘lexicon-driven’ and the ‘syntax-driven’. In the former, all of a verb's meanings are listed in the lexicon, from which the various syntactic frames are projected. Differences in both structure and interpretation are attributed to differences in meaning, or lexical representation, of a verb or verbs. In the latter, the syntax-driven approach, much of a verb's meaning is derived from the syntactic structure in which it is projected. Differences in interpretation, whether related to aspectual classification or to argument number and type, are attributable to differences in the structural representation itself. The editors' conclusion is that this structure, whether lexical or syntactic, whether projected by the verb root or by functional or overt morphology, can indeed yield all and more of the information which was once considered to be in the domain of the lexicon. And yet the lexicon's role is still seen to be crucial: the determination of the lexical entry that will account for (in)compatibility with syntactic structure is a vital part of any research into the syntax of aspect.

This chapter summarizes research on the production, interpretation, and acquisition of noun-noun compounds. Analogical generalizations can systematically govern a whole category of words across different languages and language families. The same kinds of analogical generalizations are in evidence in different domains of languages processing, from language acquisition, to visual word processing.

The traditional organization of phonological theories involves a crucial redundancy, and serious consideration of this redundancy suggests a radical simplification of the theory. In technical terms, allophonic variation can be treated in at least two different ways: first, as a mapping from symbols to symbols, via phonological rules or constraints; or second, as a mapping from symbols to signals, via principles of phonetic realization. Careful examination of specific cases of allophonic variation generally suggests (and never seems to refute) a mode of description of the second type, in which structured phonological representations are mapped onto classes of phonetic trajectories. We should therefore consider the null hypothesis: a theory that entirely eliminates the symbolic treatment of allophonic variation, and makes post-lexical representations subject to direct phonetic interpretation, without any intervening symbol-manipulation, whether by rules or by constraints.

This paper examines multidimensional paradigms, i.e. paradigms involving more than one feature dimension. I examine the concrete case of pronominal paradigms, which involve (at least) the dimensions of person and number. The problem that arises in such paradigms is that syncretisms may be observed in each dimension, i.e. they may occur both vertically (cross-person) and horizontally (cross-number). While classical nanosyntax embodies a theory of syncretism that can account for one dimension, it requires an extension to account for syncretisms in the other dimension(s). I discuss two such extensions, one making use of pointers, and another in terms of a revision of the Superset Principle. I show that both approaches make subtly different empirical predictions.

Bengali has a robust medial geminate/singleton contrast across oral stops and nasals in five places of articulation. This chapter presents a synchronic account of the phonological system involving the consonantal length contrast, which supports an asymmetric moraic representation of geminates. Based on these representational assumptions, two EEG and two behavioural experiments were conducted to investigate the processing of this geminate/singleton contrast by Bengali native speakers. The results reveal a processing asymmetry for the duration contrast: the processing of the duration contrast is indeed asymmetric: a geminate mispronunciation is accepted for a singleton real word, while the reverse is not the case. This provides evidence that the lexical representation of the duration contrast must be asymmetric and thus privative rather than equipollent.

A glottal stop is the source of one type of high tone, H1. First, §7.1 discusses evidence for the analysis that H1 comes from a glottal stop, and argues that there is sufficient phonological evidence to posit the glottal stop. It is not the case that a glottal stop is always accompanied by H1, which complicates the analysis, but such cases can be accounted for by the OCP (§6.2) and by morphological factors, discussed in §7.2. That H1 comes from a glottal stop further supports my claim that H1 spreading is leftward (§7.3). Since in some cases positing a glottal stop, along with the tones it has induced, is admittedly abstract, I do consider alternatives. §7.4 concludes, giving language internal and external evidence and argue that the lexical representations should include a glottal stop, as well as the tone it has induced.