The paper rejects the standard view according to which every tensed verb in English agrees with its subject in person and number. It argues that person is irrelevant to all verbs except BE, and that past-tense verbs and modals (other than BE) have no number agreement features. It discusses agreement mismatches which reflect the subject's meaning, but rejects the idea that subject–verb agreement may be a semantic rule; it proposes instead a new feature ‘agreement-number’. This extra number feature applies only to the subject of a tensed verb and by default has the same value as the subject's ordinary number, while also allowing various kinds of mismatch (for I and you, and for cases of ‘semantic’ agreement). It also offers analyses of agreement with non-nominal subjects and dummy there, and shows how the analysis for Standard English generalizes easily to a range of variations found in nonstandard dialects. The theoretical basis for the analysis is Word Grammar, whose main advantage is that features are free to be assigned by rule because they are not used in classification.

Claims about the productivity of a given affix are generally made without differentiating productivity according to type of discourse, although it is commonly assumed that certain kinds of derivational suffixes are more pertinent in certain kinds of texts than in others. Conversely, studies in register variation have paid very little attention to the role derivational morphology may play in register variation.

This paper explores the relation between register variation and derivational morphology through a quantitative investigation of the productivity of a number of English derivational suffixes across three types of discourse in the British National Corpus (written language, context-governed spoken language, and everyday conversations). Three main points emerge from the analysis. First, within a single register, different suffixes may differ enormously in their productivity, even if structurally they are constrained to a similar extent. Second, across the three registers under investigation a given suffix may display vast differences in productivity. Third, the register variation of suffixes is not uniform, i.e. there are suffixes that show differences in productivity across registers while other suffixes do not, or do so to a lesser extent. We offer some tentative explanations for these findings and discuss the implications for morphological theory.

Trisyllabic shortening or TSS is one of the most controversial processes in the history of English. Time after time, claims have been made about quantity variations, attributing them either to trisyllabic shortening, closed syllable shortening, or other mechanisms. Our examination of the nature of TSS in the history of English leads us to conclude that it differs from closed syllable shortening, which is syllable based, and that the preference for a maximal foot has remained the underlying incentive for maintaining vowel quantity variations throughout the centuries. However, the prosodic system has undergone dramatic changes and many features of TSS in the older and modern stages are not the same. Older TSS affected mostly inflected native words, while in Modern English, TSS causes alternations in derivationally related words with Romance suffixes. Interacting with open syllable lengthening, older TSS led to quantity alternations in inflectional paradigms which were later levelled out. Romance loans, both suffixed and nonsuffixed forms, were borrowed in their entirety and constrained by the prosodic structure of the language. Only later, when these words came to be derivationally related, were quantity alternations observable with TSS operating as a constraint dictated by the prosodic structure of the modern language. Thus, throughout the history of English, TSS has served the same purpose: it led to the preferred prosodic structure of the word.

The nominalizing -er suffix has been extremely productive throughout the history of English, and in Present-day English it has developed a wide range of base and referent types. Yet most formal linguistic treatments account satisfactorily for only a fraction of the types of -er nominals actually found. I propose a cognitive model which not only addresses the problems with verb-based forms that are encountered in other models, but includes an account of all the nonverb-based -er nominals as well.

This paper investigates all aspects of the orthography of the Ormulum in relation to the phonology of the late twelfth-century south Lincolnshire dialect which Orm's spelling system was designed to reflect. We show that Orm's adaptations of what he found in existing orthographic systems provided a set of graphic symbols that was fully capable of representing phonological contrasts in the vocabulary of the dialect and which thus in many respects resembled the inventory that an analysis on phonemic principles might provide. However, Orm's system has more orthographic symbols than an analysis of distinctive oppositions in speech would have required. All of these additions are in some measure attributable to following precedent. In this aspect of his spelling system, as in his innovations, nearly all of which also have parallels within the English orthographic tradition, we discern a spelling reformer who, in due consideration of transparency of the system as perceived by the reader, took pains to depart as little as possible from the familiar.

This paper examines an English construction which is very common in speech, but rare in writing. This construction is referred to as the thing is construction, as in: The thing is, is we've got to be strong. First, similarities between this construction and specificational pseudocleft constructions are noted, and it is proposed that the constructions are related. Then, five differences between the two construction types are discussed. An analysis is presented which accounts for the similarities and differences. Central to the analysis is the fact that thing is constructions contain ‘theta-role by recognition’ (Stowell, 1981), or appositive nouns (claim, problem, feeling, etc.), which allows the initial Wh-word to become optional. The paper also considers reduced thing is constructions such as: Our kids are great on vacations, but when they come back, is, they need to play, claiming that these, in a continuum along with clefts and thing is constructions, demonstrate the extreme case of a tendency for be to be used as a focus marker in spoken English.