Although minor details still remain to be worked out, the grammatical relationship between the sentence in Column I and the noun phrases in Column II of (1) below is considered beyond doubt. Lees, in his monograph (1960:85-94), formulated first explicit transformational rules to account for the grammatical relationship observed between the sentence (a) and the two noun phrases, one with a relative clause (b), the other with an attributive adjective (c).

Drawn from ethnographic data collected in a small coastal village on Cape Breton Island, where tourism-related industries are emerging in response to the deep sea fishing crisis that hit the area in the early 1980s, this analysis focusses on the effects of tourism on linguistic practices and representations. It is argued that these effects are not without consequence on the way French-speakers in the region (re)construct their identity.

Increased contact with outsiders leads to two seemingly contradictory tendencies: differentiation and standardization. These two strategies exert a marked influence on the social structure of the Acadian community. In this particular case, speakers must constantly negotiate an equilibrium between the desire to assert their specificity through discriminating traits that showcase their linguistic as well as cultural differences, on the one hand, and their need to communicate with a broader audience, on the other, the latter entailing a certain degree of linguistic standardization. This analysis focusses on how these speakers manage to perform this balancing act between differentiation and standardization.

Cet article propose une analyse comparée des styles conversationnels des néerlandophones et des francophones de Belgique tels qu'ils se présentent dans déux debats télévisés comparables diffusés sur les deux chaînes de télévision publiques beiges (l'une néerlandophone, l'autre francophone). L'étude des marqueurs discursifs fonctionnant comme «ouvreurs» ainsi que I'étude de la gestion des tours de parole, et notamment des chevauchements, font apparaître un style plus pondéré pour les néerlandophones et aussi plus hésitant et plus consensuel que le style francophone, les données pour le français confirmant ainsi ce qui a déjà été observé pour le style conversationnel des locuteurs franàais (de France).

The experiment reported on here investigating the syllabic attachment of post-vocalic nasals and l grew out of an earlier experiment which compared the post-vocalic liquids r and l (Laubstein 1989). Using the error elicitation technique described in Motley et al (1983), induced errors involving Vr and Vl sequences were compared. The two sequences behaved quite differently, suggesting different syllabic attachments for the two liquids. Vowel-r sequences consistently interacted with single vowels or vowel glide sequences and such sequences never split up, supporting the hypothesis (based on naturally occurring errors) that vowel-r sequences belong to a uni-positional peak constituent and supporting Kahn’s argument that English r, like w and y, is a glide (Kahn 1976). Vowel-l sequences, on the other hand, did split apart; errors involved the l alone or the vowel alone, significantly more often than they involved the r or V alone from Vr sequences (Wilcoxon p <.0001). This supported the hypothesis that the r and l belonged to different constituents. The relative frequency of errors is commonly assumed to reflect constituency. See, for instance, Stemberger and Treiman’s (1986) arguments regarding different positions in the onset. Nevertheless, such sequences also acted as single units, and in this respect behaved like vowel-r sequences. In addition, when such sequences were involved as a unit they interacted with single vowels or vowel glide sequences, suggesting that at some level of analysis they belonged to the same constituents as vowels. Speech errors which involve interactions between two items, or the substitution of one item for another, are in general structure-preserving. They involve units of the same constituent type at some level of analysis; for instance, noun phrase with noun phrase, preposition with preposition, verb with verb, and at the sub-lexical level, syllabic constituent type a with syllabic constituent type a (Laubstein 1987).

The purpose of this paper is to show that the term “palatal” has been used with various meanings and to redefine or establish a consistency of terminology concerning this term with respect to palatalized and central consonants. Confusion arising from the various divisions of the tongue into articulators and from the misuse of the above articulatory terms has led to incorrect phonological solutions.

The status of Russian palatalized and palatal consonants has been under discussion recently. Dunatov claims in a recent article that Russian palatal consonants cannot be palatalized and suggests three different orders of palatals to distinguish “the three articulatory sets of palatals encountered in the Slavic languages”: pre-palatal, medio-palatal, and post-palatal. However, he fails to state the distribution of them in Russian or the other Slavic languages.

Nissenbaum (2000) and Heck and Himmelreich (2017) (henceforth HH) are two prominent works that are noteworthy for focusing on the interaction of multiple movement dependencies (MMDs) and parasitic gaps (PGs). However, these two works consider disjoint and contrasting types of data paradigms. In this squib, I take both types of paradigms into consideration. In doing so, there are three inter-related questions that arise for our understanding of PGs (and in particular for PGs that involve certain MMDs). The first question asks what the correct descriptive generalizations about PG paradigms are. Going beyond such a generalization, we can also ask how to properly account for the data (and whether a unified analysis is possible). Finally, and more specifically, we can ask how to account for the compositional semantics of PGs, especially those involving MMDs.

We argue that the representational primes of the human phonological faculty, the so-called distinctive features, are innate and substance-free. Our arguments for the innateness of features are built on traditional and novel logical arguments, experimental evidence accumulating over recent decades, and somewhat detailed proposals about their neurobiological reality. As symbols in the brain, features are substance-free, that is, they are devoid of articulatory and acoustic content, or even any direct reference to such phenomena. This is consistent with our substance-free conception of phonological computation, an approach that eschews functionalist notions like markedness, ease of articulation, and so on. We also outline a neural model of the phonetics-phonology interface called Cognitive Phonetics, which transduces innate features to speech articulation and from speech acoustics. These extra-grammatical transduction procedures are also part of the human biological endowment, which leaves no room for language-specific phonetics in our theory of the externalization of language. We show how Cognitive Phonetics can account for traditionally recognized intersegmental coarticulation, as well as the previously unexplored intrasegmental coarticulation, strongly suggesting that the basic units of speech production are transduced features.

The concepts of X-bar theory are fundamental to the framework of generative grammar. The last version of the theory (Chomsky 1992) defines the projected positions as either narrowly or broadly L(exically)-related to the head X, where “L-relation” means inclusion in the checking domain of X. Narrowly L-related positions, nonadjoined (e.g., Spec), obey structure preserving rules; they have the basic properties of A-positions. Broadly L-related positions, adjoined and optional, have the properties of A’-positions.

One of the conundrums of the historical phonology of Spanish is the seemingly intrusive -s- in the word hasta ‘until.’ Its putative etymon, the Arabic ḥattā ‘up to, until, as far as, even, in order to’ does not have this -s- and, as far as is known, has never had it. The most recent serious discussion of and accounting for this -s- that I am aware of is that presented by Malkiel (1979) in which, dismissing previous lexical and phonological attempts as inadequate, he suggests that hasta (earlier fasta) resulted from a contamination of its predecessor fata, coming unambiguously from ḥattā, with a Romance form fascas ‘nearly, almost,’ derived in part from Latin usque ‘until.’ Both fata and fascas then went out of use, and fasta (> hasta) alone remains. In spite of the wealth of documentation adduced by Malkiel, his evidence adds up to this: before roughly 1300, there was a -word fata ‘until’ and a word fascas ‘almost’; after 1300 both fell out of use, and there was a new word fasta ‘until.’ The rest is speculation.

This article compares the usage of commencer à ‘to begin’+Vinf. and se mettre à ‘to start’ + Vinf. in modern French. Using a corpus sample of 2000 observations, we examined the effect of Adverbial complementation, of Event type (aspect), and of Tense. Based on a mixed-effects logistic regression analysis, we found evidence for Event type, where se mettre à is associated with activities, and Tense, where se mettre à seems to be associated with passé simple, futur proche and subjonctif present. On the other hand, commencer à is associated with plus-que-parfait and indicatif imparfait. We discuss the results in the frame-semantic model of Croft (2012). We make the case that commencer à can have the profile of an achievement or that of an accomplishment, while se mettre à manifests only one profile, that of an achievement. Our results support a one-component approach to aspect in which the result of the interaction between grammatical aspect and lexical aspect can be attributed to the same aspectual contour.

In a brief declaration in the last issue of this journal, our colleagues P. Drysdale, W. Mackey and M. Scargill outlined their objections to the Smith-Trager description of English stress, pitch and juncture. Their article calls into question the most fundamental American research works in English linguistics. At the outset, we would like to observe that in adopting attitudes towards the great tradition of linguistics in the United States, it is imperative that we avoid the two extremes of total belief and of rash rejection. This tradition is the product of several decades of intense, patient research by men with eminent ability to observe sounds and patterns, and an extraordinary flair for generating verifiable hypotheses. Thus the critic can condemn any part of the tradition only when he can demonstrate that it is false. On the other hand, the American tradition is empirical and positivist. It is evolving rapidly, and its conclusions and postulates are constantly being modified. Furthermore, it is not a monolithic tradition. Though there is a consensus of views at any given time, there are also hot debates, such as the current one on the interpretation of the English vowels and suprasegmentals. Thus anyone who believes this year’s conclusions may soon find himself cherishing obsolete positions that their originators have long transcended.

This article examines the effects of direct object definiteness in Austronesian (AN) and relates these effects to marking for transitivity. Definite objects often correlate with a high degree of transitive marking in the verb phrase, while indefinite objects correlate with or trigger intransitive marking, even in transitive sentences. The primacy of goal/object orientation over actor/subject orientation is another widespread tendency in AN languages. In some languages, a definite goal/object must be marked as the focus of the clause, either overtly or via the obligatory indefiniteness of other arguments, or by making it the syntactic subject, or in other ways. The article thus shows how definiteness restrictions on various arguments in AN languages can be explained against the background of historical focus systems. Data come primarily from Muna (Celebes), in which, it is argued, the historical object focus function is continued in verb forms marked explicitly for definite objects.

This study presents a partial analysis of nouns ending in orthographic -sion, -tion (or -ion) and morphophonemic variations between these nouns and related stems. It deals with an area traditionally called derivation.

The frame of reference is that of Trager and Smith, Outline of English Structure, supplemented by subsequent revisions and additions to the general theory developed by the authors in their teaching. For the purposes of this study the morphemic analysis will be limited to “postmorphemes,” i.e., morphemes occurring at the end of the word. Everything which precedes the postmorpheme(s) will be called the “stem” and will not be further segmented. The “stem” may occur elsewhere as an independent word (mutation: mutate) or in composition with different postmorpheme(s) (ambition: ambitious). The following special symbols will be used: √ … “morphemes”; √ … “allomorphs”; √ …/ “morphophonemes”; ∽ “varies with.” In three cases (Y, T, S) a small capital letter is used as a morphophonemic symbol; these are denned below.

We report a study that tests children’s knowledge of an effect of Principle C of the binding theory: In the adult grammar of English and French, coreference between a main clause object pronoun and a non-pronominal subject of a sentence-final temporal clause is permitted, whereas coreference between a subject pronoun and the subject of a temporal clause is blocked. In an act-out task, both French-speaking adults and children aged 3–7 were found to be sensitive to the position of a main clause pronoun (subject vs object) in selecting a referent for the subject of a temporal clause, permitting coreference more frequently when the pronoun was in object position. This result replicates earlier work done on English. A sentence judgement task produced clear results only for adults. Results from the act-out suggest that children are relatively inept at integrating non-mentioned participants into their interpretation of sentences. We suggest that children’s knowledge of the principle C effect we tested constitutes a “poverty of the stimulus” argument for innateness.