The core and the periphery of language in linguistic description
         Petr Sgall, Charles University, Prague

The close relationship between the core of language and its underlying
syntactic structure is examined on the basis of the Praguian conception of
markedness. A possibility is characterized how to account for the
following hypotheses:
   (i) the prototypical means expressing grammatical values are morphemes
(endings, affixes, function words); word order (with intonation) expresses
first of all the topic-focus articulation (TFA), also in English;
   (ii) the interactive nature of language is connected with TFA
constituting an aspect of sentence structure;
   (iii) dependency syntax appears to be necessary, since its elements are
present in most different descriptive frameworks (Lexical Functional
Grammar, Head Driven Phrase Structure, cf. also X-bar theory, theta
roles); constituency perhaps is not necessary;
   (iv) each level of language structure has its own syntax; syntax,
semantics and pragmatics are not three levels of the system of language;
   (v) language (as a system internalized by humans) is to be
distinguished from its use in communication as well as from layers of
cognition;
   (vi) (underlying) syntax is to be distinguished from morphemics, the
former displaying a tree-like patterning, while the latter constitutes a
string;
   (vii) while the core of language can be described as a system with
a relatively simple kind of basic pattern, the large and complex
peripheral domains of language have to be accounted for by rules of
different degrees of specificity, with unclear borderlines.