Consideration of the problem of alternative agreement forms (§ 1) leads us to postulate a hierarchy of agreement positions (§ 2) which allows us to make predictions as to the possibility and relative frequency of semantic as compared to syntactic agreement. The hierarchy is justified by data from a variety of languages which permit alternative agreements (§ 3). Confirming evidence comes from a study of the instances where agreement in case and person is required in different languages (§ 4). The status of the hierarchy and the type of prediction it makes are discussed. It is suggested that the hierarchy determines the main divisions of a measure called SYNTACTIC DISTANCE and that other factors (word order, distance between controller and agreeing element, depth of stacking) determine relative degrees of distance within these main divisions (§ 5). The basic claim of the paper is that as syntactic distance increases so does the likelihood of semantic agreement.

I specify a typology for the extreme of inflectional morphology, namely suppletion (as in go ϳ went). This is an unusual enterprise within typology, and it requires a 'canonical' approach. That is, I define the canonical or best instance, through a set of converging criteria, and use this point in theoretical space to locate the various occurring types. Thus the criteria establish the dimensions along which specific instances of suppletion are found, allowing me to calibrate examples out from the canonical. The criteria fall into two main areas, those internal to the lexeme and those external to it. Moreover, I find interactions with other morphological phenomena and discuss four of them: syncretism, periphrasis, overdifferentiation, and reduplication. These remarkable instances of suppletion, particularly when in interaction with other phenomena, extend the boundary of the notion 'possible word'. Besides laying out the possibilities for the specific phenomenon of suppletion, I show how a canonical approach allows progress in typology, even in the most challenging areas.* INTRODUCTION. If the examples were not so familiar, linguists would look harder at instances of suppletion, like go ϳ went and Russian rebenok 'child' ϳ deti 'children'. Such items are significant for our view of morphology (as Carstairs-McCarthy (1994: 4410) points out). They are also a limiting case for the notion POSSIBLE WORD, and as such they constitute a real challenge to the typologist. There have been several accounts of suppletion, starting with Osthoff 1899; an annotated bibliography of this work with over seventy items is provided by Chumakina (2004). However, the definitions and surveys proposed do not yet constitute a full typology. The focus of this article is therefore a specification of the criteria for a typology of suppletion. To propose a typology in this apparently hostile terrain means adopting a CANONICAL APPROACH, one that defines a principled point in the theoretical space and calibrates outwards from it.I start by outlining the basic notions needed and then consider the place of suppletion. The heart of the article is the criteria for the typology, which divide naturally into two main types, those internal to the lexeme and those external to the lexeme. These are taken up in turn. In addition, I treat the question of interactions with other morphological phenomena, which extend further the notion possible word, and finally address the interesting issue of the frequency of suppletive items.

In this paper we introduce a declarative approach to inflectional morphology, which we call Network Morphology, using the lexical representation language DATR. We show that we can account for a range of (Russian) data, for which previously various rule types were required, and can provide a more satisfying analysis than was previously available. First we outline the essential data (section 2), highlighting the problems they present. Section 3 introduces the basic tenets of Network Morphology. This draws heavily on DATR, which we present in outline in section 4. Next we reconsider the Russian declensional classes from this new perspective (section 5). We show how the approach described overcomes long-standing problems in an elegant fashion; the complexity of the data suggests that the approach adopted has implications well beyond Russian. We then tackle the complex problem of animacy in Russian, which exemplifies interesting regularities extending across declensional classes (section 6).

Berlin and Kay (1969) suggest that languages have a maximum of 11 basic color terms. Russian may be an exception in that it appears to have twelve basic color terms, including two for the blue region of color space. We report a study of Russian color terms, which was carried out to establish the inventory of basic color terms as a test of Berlin and Kay's theory and to clarify the status of the two blue terms. A large representative sample of speakers of Russian performed two tasks: a list task (77 subjects) and a color-naming task (54 subjects). The results from the two tasks converge to indicate that Russian does indeed have twelve basic color terms including the two terms for blue. In addition, plotting the Russian terms in color space and comparing the results with similar work on English allows us to define certain Russian terms more accurately than has been the case previously.

Gender is a fascinating category, central and pervasive in some languages and totally absent in others. In this new, comprehensive account of gender systems, over 200 languages are discussed, from English and Russian to Archi and Chichewa. Detailed analysis of individual languages provides clear illustrations of specific types of system. Gender distinction is often based on sex; sometimes this is only one criterion and the gender of nouns depends on other factors (thus 'house' is masculine in Russian, feminine in French and neuter in Tamil). Some languages have comparable distinctions such as human/non-human, animate/inanimate, where sex is irrelevant. No other textbook surveys gender across this range of languages. Gender will be invaluable both for class use and as a reference resource for students and researchers in linguistics.