[...]... can The phrase the can, the object of the verb open, expresses the argument with the semantic role Theme, while Elizabeth, the subject of the verb, expresses the Agent In (3), by contrast, the can, while it still expresses the Theme, is the subject of the verb rather than the object In (4), as in (2), the Theme the can is again the object, but this time the argument expressed by the subject is not an... true, then r must be true too Therefore in appropriate experimental conditions we arrange that q holds, and then check whether r holds also If we observe r, then the 4 The evolution of morphology experiment tends to conWrm the hypothesis p, whereas if we observe not r, the experiment disconWrms p This form of argument is familiar in linguistic theory, too Let p be some hypothesized principle of Universal... opener of ours What this illustrates is that the semantic roles that can be expressed by the grammatical subject include at least the Agent, the Theme, and the Instrument, while the Theme can be expressed sometimes by the subject, sometimes by the object And it is not only the Theme that is syntactically so Xuid Consider an elaboration of (2): Why there is morphology 19 (5) Elizabeth opened the can... terminology, the ‘Theme’ of the clause? It turns out there is no single answer Consider the following: (2) Elizabeth opened the can (3) The can opened easily (4) Surprisingly, that rusty old opener of ours opened the can without any diYculty In (2), the verb open is accompanied by two noun phrase arguments (expressions identifying participants in the state of aVairs), namely Elizabeth and the can The phrase the. .. rather than negative outcome for syntactic theorists It absolves them from having to make sense of certain aspects of grammar that do indeed make no sense from the point of view of the development of syntax Besides, my position is already ‘Chomskyan’ in some degree, because the causal chain that I invoke (phonology gives rise to morphophonology which gives rise to morphology) is 8 The evolution of morphology. .. image of the order observed in sentences produced by the left-hemisphere majority The research would thus be wanting to explain why right-hemisphere speakers do not say Mat the on sat cat the rather than The cat sat on the mat The Earth linguist’s question is not entirely bizarre, perhaps, in view of the fact that the two brain hemispheres are in many respects mirror images of one another Even so, the. .. Ziyawaphuza ‘They are drinking it’ (21) Ayawaphuza ‘They are drinking it’ The fact that all these four examples have the same English gloss reXects a variation in form according to the class of the drinker and of what is drunk But more puzzling is the fact that the way in which they are written suggests that they consist of only one word, without any trace of a preverbal subject corresponding to ‘they’ and... elements, not sequences of two or more And that is easy enough to do in English Consider the following pairs of word forms: (1) a b c d e wait sing cling give Xy waited sang clung gave Xew In (1a), the diVerence between the present- and the past-tense forms of the verb wait is expressed by the presence of the element -ed in the latter, following the verb root wait In the (1a) pattern, therefore, one might... Further still, this pronominal element is not mutually exclusive with a noun phrase object, as is shown in (14)–(17): when both occur, the implication is that the object is deWnite rather than indeWnite 22 The evolution of morphology This kind of co-occurrence option is unavailable to the pronoun it in English, as is shown by the contrast between (14) on the one hand and (23) on the other: (23) a à The. .. character They include such disparate phenomena as the role of the Fibonacci series2 in determining the shape of pine cones, and the role of physics in determining that a mouse the size of an elephant could not exist (because its legs would be too Ximsy to support its body) (b) The ‘interface condition’ in S0: its ‘principled’ part, which reXects the fact that S0 must interact with the human brain and the . unconnected observations, we have the red tinge of distant galaxies, 4 The evolution of morphology the behaviour of train whistles, and the mysterious hiss picked up by the Bell Lab antenna—and no. that other world precisely because it is so untypical of the world we know. The usual pattern of behaviour is for the male to insert his sperm into the female, and for the female to undertake the task. more than that. The important point is that the imbalance between the two patterns of reproductive behaviour is a huge factor to be taken account of in the task of reaching an adequate theory of sexual