Grammatical relations in universal grammar

From the introduction: [W]e shall look at a number of recurring language phenomena involving grammatical relations. Because most of these allow a universal formulation only in terms of relational networks rather than linear or constituent structures, we shall make use of Postal and Perlmutter\u27s promising framework, generally referred to as Relational Grammar (RG)

On downstairs transitivity in causative clause unions

From the introduction: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a number of languages require downstairs (ds) intransitivity for causative clause union (CsU). In addition I offer for testing the hypothesis that ds intransitivity is a universal constraint in CsU. In order to accomplish my initial purpose and at the same time give preliminary testing to the proposed hypothesis, I will compare the predictions made by the received version of CsU with those made by my own version plus the proposed ds intransitivity constraint for a number of languages

A new view of to-contraction

All treatments of so-called to-contraction in English (Lakoff 1970, Bresnan 1971, Lightfoot 1976) attempt to deal with the phenomenon entirely in terms of contiguity. The purpose of this squib is to point out that the major constraint on this phenomenon is rather one of subject coreference, and furthermore that this coreference condition is identical to that for a universal rule which I have called \u27equi-subject clause union\u27 (Frantz 1976)

Multiple Dependency in Blackfoot

This is a brief study of Blackfoot sentences in which a single nominal bears relations to both an upstairs (matrix) and downstairs (embedded) clause. In particular, I wish to focus attention on the linear positions possible for such nominals, for they indicate the need for revision of a "law" of Arc Pair Grammar (APG) (Johnson and Postal, to appear)

Equi-Subject Clause Union

Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1976), pp. 179-18

Syntactic Constraints on Noun Incorporation in Southern Tiwa

Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1985), pp. 107-11