Electronic texts are claimed to exhibit features distinct from their more tangible cousins. The Snapshot project aims to observe and capture language usage in an electronic medium by creating an open corpus of World Wide Web documents. These documents are re-encoded using the TEI guidelines to create a flexible, persistent and portable data repository. This report gives an overview of the decisions made with respect to the re-encoding of HTML documents, and with the structuring the overall corpus.

This article proposes that, with Fiengo and May's (1994) indexing theory, a full-fledged reconstruction approach to null argument phenomena in such languages as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean becomes possible. Not only does the present NP-Ellipsis analysis preserve the insight of Otani and Whitman (1991), but it also helps overcome the drawbacks of their VP-Ellipsis analysis of null objects. This article thus argues that null NPs in these languages must be empty phrase- markers underlyingly, not empty pronouns per se, and hence, their reference properties can be determined only at LF after reconstruction. It is shown that this analysis also promises to solve certain binding-theoretic puzzles that null argument phenomena have posed.

The two cycles of Rilke's late work are evidently different but in Rilke's eyes they belong closely together. The essay is an attempt to determine the points these two cycles have in common. The universe of the Neue Gedichte was perfectly close, in the Requiem cycle he aims to open the universe. While the early created form was closed, individual and self-transcendent, after the turn, the created form is open, being ajusted to plural, out-standing and principally unreachable aims. In the law this adjustement the three late forms of Rilke's late poetry, the Elegien, the Sonette and the poems which do not belong to a cycle, coincide. Rilke followed his turn consequently, he even invented an own (a) grammatical case which we name lativus absolutus; this case penetrates the entire late work. Rilke also elaboretad a real theorem and this theorem is strikingly close to Klee's theoretical discussion.

Unlike their English counterparts, Chinese resultatives allow reverse theta role assignment under predictable conditions and do not demonstrate the effect of the Direct Object Restriction. Both differences are shown to result from a single structural factor: an empty subject is not permitted in the bare resultative phrase in English. The analysis also accounts for various subtle distinctions between the lexical and bi-clausal resultative constructions inside Chinese. An implication of this theory is that the causal relation in a resultative is computed directly off of the construction and that this computation takes place in different components of language: lexicon, syntax, and the post-syntactic semantics.

Goethe did not primarily suppress the Paralipomena to the Walpurgisnacht because of the obscenity of the scenes with Satan. There are three more important reasons. 1. The participation in the witches' meeting during the Walpurgis Night is intended as one of the entertainments promised by Mephistopheles. It is not to be regarded as a counter-declaration to the Prolog im Himmel. The contents of Satan's speech would also have been inappropriate for such a counter-declaration. 2. The Hochgerichtsszene manifests the inclusion of the monks' orders of the inquisition as the core of the infernal event but without any influence on the progression of the play. 3. The more powerful the presentation of witchcraft was with its connection to evil, the more it confirmed the obsessive belief in witches. The horrible consequences of this belief were still clearly present in the playwright's mind and in those of his contemporaries.

What occurs when the normally silent lady of trouvère song -- the woman spoken about or spoken to in courtly lyric verse -- assumes a voice, that is, initiates a dialogue, responds, argues, contradicts, questions, and judges? Grounded on a computer concordance of eleven jeux-partis in which one or both partners are women I map in these exchanges paradigms of social interaction that differ markedly from the inherited patterns displayed in courtly trouvère song. A concern for agency, coupled with a need to enhance their reputation, marks most of the female participants in jeux-partis. Female speakers elect not to take the persona of the powerless, suppliant lover -- typical of both the courtly trobairitz canso and the popularizing Old French chanson de femme -- or to play the role of the cold, tyrannical lady. Instead, these feminine voices confidently assert their rights to the act of prayer and sexual pleasure, sometimes without regard for courtly constraints. The expression of female desire is presumed to go counter to the courtly code, whereas outspoken sensuality and active, independent female characters are prevalent in the non-courtly register. It appears that open expressions of sensuality were also possible in the jeu-parti.