The non-linear analysis of Spanish phonology as proposed by Harris (1984) and others promises to augment the explanatory power of currently available phonological descriptions, and may offer significant insights into the description of phonological differences among dialects. However, the interaction between previously held notions of phonological processes and the new theoretical analysis has not yet been fully explored, and the claim that the latter apparatus must necessarily completely supplant the former is perhaps over ambitious. The present note will deal with competing analyses of two frequent processes in Spanish, velarization of underlying /n/ and aspiration of underlying /s/, both of which have been used in support of the latest theoretical proposals. I will attempt to demonstrate that the data used to formulate these proposals have been excessively idealized. The full range of complexity and variation which surrounds these and similar phenomena necessitates a more ramified analysis, and even an idealization which does not distort the fundamental nature of the two processes casts doubt on the simple analysis suggested as a replacement for orthodox generative and traditional structuralist analyses.

Ross (1967) showed that in relative clauses, not only may the WH-phrase be fronted, but an NP or PP containing the WH-phrase may also be fronted, as shown in (1):

1. (1)

   1. a. This is the child [who]i I’ve been hearing stories about ti.

   2. b. This is the child [about whom]i I’ve been hearing stories ti.

   3. c. This is the child [stories about whom]i I’ve been hearing ti.

   Ross called this phenomenon “pied piping”. His statement of the pied piping convention is given in (2).

2. (2) Any transformation which is stated in such a way as to effect the reordering of some specified node NP, where this node is preceded and followed by variables in the structural index of the rule, may apply to this NP or to any non-coordinate NP which dominates it, as long as there are no occurrences of any coordinate node, nor of the node S, on the branch connecting the higher node and the specified node. (1967:114)

Notice that Ross’s statement applies to any transformation moving an element over a variable. Thus, the prediction is that WH-questions and relative clauses should behave similarly with respect to pied piping. This is not the case, as pointed out by Bresnan (1976:37). Questions seem to be much more limited in what can be pied piped than are relative clauses.

General properties of the Canadian English vowel space are derived from an experimental-acoustic study of vowel production underway in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Comparing the preliminary Winnipeg results with similar data from General American English confirms previously described generalizations for Canadian English: the merger of low-back vowels, the relative retraction of /æ/, and the relative advancement of /u/ and /Ʊ/. However, a similar comparison of the Winnipeg sample with comparable Southern California data disputes the accuracy of the claim that Canadian Shift (Clarke et al. 1995) is a feature of ‘general’ Canadian and Californian English. An acoustic analysis uncovers subtle phonetic distinctions that make possible a more precise characterization of Canadian Raising: rather than only adjusting the height of the nucleus, Winnipeg speakers produce a directional shift in both the nucleus and offglide of the diphthongs /aɪ, aƱ/; this process applies to all three diphthongs (including /oɪ/).

In Mandarin, there is an element de which has for years been the subject of analysis. Li and Thompson (1981) and Ross (1983 and 1984) have tried, with little success, to provide a unified treatment of this element. Li and Thompson (1981) claim that there are several de’s in Mandarin: a possessive marker, an adjectival marker and a nominalization marker. But the structural properties of these de’s and the similarities among them are ignored.

Using the Government and Binding framework (Chomsky 1981), I will provide an analysis which accounts for the structural and functional similarities and differences among the various de’s in Mandarin. First, I will state the theoretical assumptions relevant to the discussion of de. Second, I will present the non-controversial evidence showing that de is a head-final complementizer in relative clauses. Third, I will present further data exemplifying a head-final de in other constructions. Fourth, I will demonstrate the impossibility of having a head-final de complementizer in resultative clauses. Finally, I will propose that there are two de complementizers in Mandarin, one head-final, the other head-initial.

The most satisfactory method of collecting data concerning speech habits demands that a trained fieldworker conduct personal interviews with representative informants. Since, however, the time and money required for carrying out such interviews are seldom available, the investigator must often turn to less satisfactory but more practicable methods; one of these is the multiple-choice questionnaire of the type used to gather the information for this limited survey of Ontario speech habits. The fundamental weakness of the circulated questionnaire is self-evident: the informant must substitute for the trained field worker and observe his own usage. His success in making reliable observations will depend on his native intelligence and level of education, his understanding of the significance of the survey, and his conscientiousness with regard to answering the questions.

This article provides an analysis of participial constructions in English, within the feature-checking approach to inflectional morphology. It argues for a unified treatment of the perfect, passive and adjectival uses of the past participle, involving a monosemous inflectional head checking a monosemous affix. There are two classes of constructions with -ing, each of which is given a unified treatment. The analysis requires the assumption that head-adjoined structures can be generated directly, rather than arising only as a result of movement. It also demonstrates that inflectional and derivational affixation are inherently different processes. An affix may in principle be attached by either process, with each process resulting in a different output structure. With these two provisos, it is possible to maintain both Johns’ (1992) One Form/One Meaning Principle and the more restrictive Strong Monosemy Principle proposed here.

The number of copular constructions found with non-verbal predicates in Universal Grammar has recently been a matter of some controversy. Traditional theories have claimed that there are two constructions: an equative—with two argument NPs—and predicative—with a single argument and a non-verbal predicate. Recently this bifurcation has been challenged by authors who claim that equative constructions show asymmetries similar to those found in predicatives, and that these asymmetries are due to a simple subject/predicate distinction. They claim that there is a single predicative copular construction in natural language. In this article, syntactic evidence for the traditional semantic division between equatives and predicatives is provided. It is shown that in Modern Irish, there are two word orders corresponding to the equative/predicative split and these two have distinct syntactic and semantic properties. Further, it is also shown that the asymmetries used to argue for a single copular construction are due to simple structural conditions rather than a subject/predicate split.

One of the best known and most controversial features of Canadian English is the vocalic feature labeled by Chambers (1973) as “Canadian Raising”, which affects the /aI/ of right and the /aU/ of lout. This feature represents a situation in which the onset of the diphthong is closer to the target of the glide before fortis consonants than before lenis consonants: for instance, ride may have [aε] and right [3I], and loud may have [ao] but lout [ʌU]. Many of the previous studies of the feature, beginning with its original description by Martin Joos (1942), who raises the question of whether the second syllable of typewriter has the raised or non-raised variant, have involved the syllabification rules that determine when the onset is raised and when it is not. Chambers (1973) demonstrates that writer normally has the raised variant and shows that the relative stress on particular syllables can prevent raising from taking place in some cases where the diphthong occurs before a voiceless consonant. Vance (1987), Paradis (1980), and Chambers (1989) also deal with this latter problem, reformulating it in terms of linear (Vance) or Kahnian (Paradis, Chambers) theories of syllable formation.

In this paper I address the question what Media Lengua can tell us about the distinction between stems and affixes, the nature of lexical entries, and the relation between the lexicon, syntax, and phonology. It is part of a much larger attempt, coming from a variety of subdisciplines to provide what is sometimes termed external evidence for particular assumptions about the nature of the human language faculty.

Dans un article précédant (Surridge, 1985) nous avons examiné la relation entre le genre grammatical des composés en français et leur terminaison phonétique. Nous avons démontré que le genre grammatical des composés est attribué selon certaines règles relativement simples. Ces règles dépendent soit directement soit indirectement de la structure morpho-syntaxique du composé en conjonction, pour certains types de composés, avec des critères sémantiques étroitement liés à la structure du nom. La “micro-syntaxe” de la composition (nous empruntons le terme employé par Benveniste 1967:15) inclut une formule pour déterminer le genre grammatical des noms produits par ce mécanisme, formule qui est en large mesure indépendante de la terminaison phonétique du composé. Nous nous proposons maintenant d’examiner le rôle dans l’attribution du genre grammatical d’une autre “micro-syntaxe”, celle de la nominalisation suffixale, et d’un phénomène associé: la nominalisation par conversion grammaticale.

The Development of generative phonology to deal with the phonological component of transformational grammars has in recent years led to many fruitful insights in the analysis and description of synchronic states of languages. It was inevitable, however, that generativists should eventually turn their attention to historical linguistics and seek to re-interpret the older laws of sound change in terms of modern rules, recognizing specifically the effects of the addition of new rules, the extension of rules by the removal of constraints, and the deletion or re-ordering of rules (King 1969: 39-63).

Paradis (1980:501) observes that

Plusieurs observateurs ont noté que le français québécois faisait en réalisation phonétique un plus grand usage de la durée vocalique que le français standard, par exemple, et surtout qu’il utilise la diphtongaison comme mode de réalisation privilégié de la durée dans certains contextes. La présente étude se propose d’en décrire les manifestations et d’en montrer la portée exacte à partir d’exemples pris essentiellement au français populaire de Montréal: au-delà de ses caractéristiques de détail particulières, c’est un bon représentant des grands traits phonétiques du français québécois, à l’exclusion des variétés d’origine acadienne qu’on peut rencontrer dans la Basse Matapédia et la Baie des Chaleurs, aux Iles de la Madeleine et sur la Basse Côte Nord.

Substratal influences as an explanation for creolization (and language change generally) often fail to convince for one major reason, namely that, in most cases, the possible substratum for a given creole language is now separated from the site where creolization took place by a wide historical and geographical gap. This, for example, is the case of the West African languages vis-à-vis the Caribbean Creoles.

In Chilcotin, an Athapaskan language of northern British Columbia, surface alternations of vowels are determined by a process called “flattening” (Krauss 1975, Cook 1976a). So far, the process of flattening, and indeed almost all other aspects of Chilcotin phonology, remain virtually unknown to phonologists in general. In this article, I provide a descriptive introduction to Chilcotin flattening. The first two sections describe the vowel and consonant systems, respectively, in terms of autonomous phonology, and the third section describes the flattening process and introduces some of the theoretical issues associated with it.

This article investigates the syntactic and semantic properties of complex predicates in Persian in order to isolate the individual contributions of the verbal components. The event structure of causative alternation and unergative verbs is determined, based on a decomposition of the verbal construction into primitive syntactic elements consisting of lexical roots and functional heads, with the latter projecting all arguments of the verbal construction. An analysis is provided whereby the argument structure is not projected from the lexicon but is formed compositionally by the conjunction of the primitive components of the complex predicate in syntax. The dual behaviour of Persian complex predicates as lexical and syntactic elements, which has been attested in Persian literature on light verb constructions, follows naturally from the analysis proposed since there is no strict division between the level of word formation and the component manipulating phrasal constructs.

Constraints, which go also by the names “conditions”, “filters”, and less transparently, “principles” and “parameters” are currently opposed to (contextual and non-contextual) arbitrary rules, and are argued to be more explanatory in the scientific sense that they can: 1) reduce the number of sources and/or causes of a given phenomenon; 2) link apparently unrelated facts; and 3) make more predictions, if formulated adequately and related to universal grammar (UG). Although the notion of phonological constraints was not born with generative phonology (see, e.g., Hockett 1958:282), it is within that framework that they have begun to receive more formal treatment (Paradis and Nikiema 1993:45).

This article examines the various realizations of the Italian definite article and concludes, against all previous accounts of this phenomenon, that neither the singular nor the plural realizations constitute a case of allomorphy stricto sensu. Significantly extending Larsen's (1998) analysis, the paper argues that all of the realizations of the definite article, including the problematic [i] and [ʎi], share a single underlying representation. It is proposed that the definite article is associated with a template with separate sites for definiteness and φ-features. It is further argued that [ʎ] is not a primitive entity in Italian; rather, it emerges from a very specific configuration in which /i/ and /l/ are conjoined and followed by a second realized vowel /i/. The templatic and segmental decompositions yield a morphologically unified analysis in which all of the realizations of the definite article are based on a single lexical representation followed by the application of regular phonology.

Aphasia refers to an impairment of language processing resulting from brain damage. A very common symptom observed in aphasic speech is the presence of phonemic paraphasias, i.e., phonemic errors involving the substitution, addition or syncope of one (or more) segment(s) in a word stimulus. Phonemic paraphasias can be found across multiple tasks (repetition, reading aloud, spontaneous speech, picture naming) that require a subject to produce a word sound. They are not specific to a particular type of aphasia since Broca’s aphasics, Wernicke’s aphasics, conduction aphasics, and mixed aphasics all produce phonemic paraphasias (see Lecours et al 1983).

It has commonly been proposed that there is a stage in development where children’s early productions are binary feet, or minimal words. However, the present study of a French-speaking child (1;1–1;8) finds an extended period where both CVC and disyllabic target words are truncated to CV after initially being produced as reduplicated CiVCiV forms. That is, the child appears to regress, failing to produce disyllabic forms that could be produced earlier. This article proposes an explanation for this apparent regression in terms of segmental-prosodic constraint interaction, where the child’s limited segmental inventory, in conjunction with the high frequency of CV lexical items in everyday French, conspire to yield subminimal truncations as “optimal” at this stage in development. These findings provide support for a growing body of literature showing the importance of both constraint interaction and frequency effects in early production, arguing for a more probabilistic approach to theories of language learning.