A previous panel study of 59 speakers of Montreal French showed an increase in inflected futures (IF) at the expense of periphrastic futures (PF) as this population aged, running counter to the direction of historical change: reduction of IF. Matching two samples of speakers across the same time interval by age and social characteristics, the current trend study investigates whether or not this increase reflects retrograde change in the speech community. Results show community stability over the same period, confirming the earlier age grading interpretation and disconfirming any possibility that the disappearance of IF may be reversing. We propose that this pattern of retrograde lifespan change may emerge from a combination of social forces typically found in late stages of language change, with concomitant stylistic effect. Further, such a pattern may suggest the mechanism that creates a very long tail for retreating variants.

According to Talmy’s typology of “lexicalization patterns” for a motion event, English is the type of language that conflates Motion and Manner in the verb root, whereas Japanese is the type of language that conflates Motion and Path in the verb root. This article provides an explanation for why there is such a difference between English and Japanese within the framework of Hale and Keyser’s syntactic approach to argument structure. It extends Hale and Keyser’s approach to motion verbs and locational/directional Ps in English and Japanese and shows that given a “Lexical Relational Structure” of a motion event, the difference between English and Japanese derives from the fact that the former has a variety of directional Ps, allowing the insertion of a manner-of-motion verb into the Motion V, whereas the latter has a variety of directed motion verbs with the Path P incorporated into the Motion V. This suggests that Talmy’s lexicalization patterns are constrained by general syntactic principles.

This article examines the conjunct order found in Algonquian languages and attempts to characterize the difference between the conjunct and the independent orders in formal terms. Most of the examples are drawn from Passamaquoddy-Maliseet and Montagnais. Specific morphological properties of the two orders are considered: the ability to take person prefixes, the richness of agreement features, and the phonological conditioning of stem-initial vowels. A weak word order effect is observed in Montagnais, and the overall distribution of the two verb paradigms is examined. All of these facts are related to the hypothesis that verbs bearing conjunct morphology move to Comp, while independent verbs remain in Infl. This operation is motivated by the dependence of a conjunct clause on a higher verb or noun, as in subordination or relativization. In some cases, the dependency may derive from the adjunct status of the conjunct clause itself. The overall picture is one of a configurational language type, with superficial differences reducible to parametric variation.

In the first article of this series I pointed out the great similarity between the speech habits of Ontarioans and those of their American neighbours across the line: both speak a variety of North American English. This state of affairs should not be surprising in view of the early settlement history of the borderlands and of subsequent cultural and social contact along the border.

There are, nevertheless, many linguistic features not shared by speakers of English on both sides of the border. In terms of vocabularly I have already illustrated a number of such differences, indicating that, in the main, they probably result from the generalization in Ontario of words current in British English—the speech of thousands of immigrants who have come to Canada during the past century or so.

This article consists of a generative analysis of the variable surface ordering of demonstratives in Michif, a mixed language historically derived from French and Cree, and spoken by some Métis. It is claimed that all demonstratives in Michif originate in [Spec, DemP] and raise to [Spec, DP]. Prenominal demonstratives occur when the head of the movement chain is pronounced, while postnominal demonstratives are the result of two factors: first, the pronunciation of the tail rather than the head of the demonstrative’s movement chain, and second, the noun undergoing a last resort p-movement, adjoining to DemP. The different patterning is motivated via meaning differences in the corresponding patterns, appealing to the differences in the featural makeup of demonstratives. Pragmatic information, said here to be a contrastive focus feature, is posited on some demonstratives while not on others, yielding the different ordering and also a different interpretation. The variable nature of demonstratives cross-linguistically is also discussed.

Les tours prépositionnels jouent le même rôle que les cas: ils expriment des relations. Jusqu’ici tout le monde est d’accord; les divergences commencent quand on veut préciser la nature de ces relations. Pour des linguistes comme R. Jakobson, B. Pottier et J. R. Gallup (ces derniers suivant une tradition guillaumienne), pour le Hjelmslev de La Catégorie des cas, pour un latiniste comme Perret, elles sont sémantiques; pour la philologie traditionnelle et pour des linguistes comme J. Kuryłowicz, E. Benvéniste, R. H. Robins, J. Perrot et des tenants de la grammaire générative comme N. Ruwet, elles sont parfois uniquement syntaxiques. Cette dernière perspective s’attache à rendre compte du « fonctionnement des éléments de langue » et, comme l’étude fonctionnelle du latin et surtout du grec a été négligée par la philologie traditionnelle presque uniquement occupée de diachronie, c’est cette perspective que nous adopterons, en nous en tenant au latin classique d’une part, à l’attique d’autre part, états (approximatifs) de langue assez semblables en ce qui concerne le problème qui nous occupe.

This article argues for a minimalist approach to the variation between Romance languages with respect to the generic interpretation associated with infinitival complements of epistemic verbs. It is proposed that epistemic verbs have inherent temporal features and that they assign a tense feature to their complement. These features are checked under a Spec-head relation through two temporal projections, related either to the object position or the subject position. The variation observed between Portuguese and French, Italian and Spanish with respect to the event interpretation of infinitives is formulated in terms of the strong/weak status of the [+specific] feature of Tense. The difference in the temporal interpretation of the inflected infinitives with respect to the presence or absence of the have + past participle sequence is derived from the hypothesis that the tense of the participle raises to the TP projection that c-commands it when it is morphologically invisible, the indicative present being visible in Portuguese, but not in the other languages.

We compare the use and function of two discourse particles that show many similarities: Canadian English eh and Canadian French hein. Surveys of anglophone students at the University of Toronto and francophone students at Université Laval reveal that these particles have similar discourse functions and that there are many parallels in their patterns of use. However, francophone students report a higher use of hein than do anglophone students of eh. Moreover, francophones have more positive attitudes towards constructions with hein than do their anglophone counterparts with respect to eh. In addition, eh—used both less often and valued less positively—has taken on additional functions as an identity marker: it is used to identify speakers of Canadian English and, in print, to evoke Canadian solidarity. In contrast, hein does not have an identity marking function. We propose that the development of an identity marking function for eh—and the lack of such a function for hein—reflects differences in how linguistic identities are constructed in English and French Canada.

Studies of word-order universals have had great impact in modern linguistics, thanks to Greenberg’s (1963) work and to Hawkins’s (1983) refinements. Greenberg’s conclusions were based on a sample of 30 languages “for more detailed information” and 142 languages “for certain limited cooccurrences of basic word order” (Hawkins 1983:xi; cf. Greenberg 1963:74–75). Hawkins expanded the 142 “to some 350 languages”, and for “between one-third and one-half of these supplementary data have been collected of the type that Greenberg listed in his 30-language sample” (Hawkins 1983:xi-xii). Hawkins proposed extensive revisions in Greenberg’s universals based on this expanded sample.

In his study of consonant epenthesis, Wetzels (1985:285-286) recognizes the existence of two distinct types: “one type involves the appearance of an epenthetic consonant inside liquid-final clusters; the second type concerns intrusive stops which originate inside sequences of consonants which do not have liquids as their second member.” Following are some characteristic examples:

In phonology, constraints are finally coming into their own. There is no real consensus, however, about how constraints behave, and specifically how they interact with other aspects of the phonology and with each other. Theories of Declarative Phonology (DP) approach this “Interaction Problem” (Scobbie 1991a) in a radical way. In DP everything is a constraint — generalizations and lexical entries alike constrain the form of the intended phonological representation (“surface structure”). Moreover, constraints are mutually compatible, indefeasible and are declared non-procedurally. Declarative Phonology is therefore an extremely simple and restrictive type of constraint-based phonology, eschewing constraint conflict, violation and destructive repair. For details of various declarative theories as well as phonological and computational motivation for the declarative paradigm, see Scobbie (1991a) and the other papers in that volume, Bird et al (1993), Bird (1990), Broe (1993), Coleman (1992), Russell (1992), Scobbie (1991b) and Wheeler (1988).

Berlin and Kay (1969) present strong evidence that “all languages share a universal system of basic colour categorization” and that “the basic color-term inventories of most languages expand through time by lexicalizing these categories in a highly constrained, universal order” (Kay and McDaniel 1978:610). The validity of these conclusions has also been demonstrated by Collier et al. (1976) and by Kay and McDaniel (1978). The evolutionary process identified by Berlin and Kay can be represented schematically as follows:

where the arrow may be read ‘is encoded before’ (Kay and McDaniel 1978: 615). In other words, languages proceed through a series of stages in the development of their basic colour-term lexicon, with the most simplistic system containing only terms for white (light) and black (dark). Any expansion of this fundamental system will first result in the addition of a term for red and then in the addition of a term for green or yellow. If further expansion takes place, “yellow or green, whichever did not emerge at the previous stage, now emerges” (Berlin and Kay 1969:18), followed by terms for blue and brown. When a system develops beyond Stage VI, “there is a rapid expansion to the full roster of eleven basic color categories,” although no particular order of appearance among terms for purple, pink, orange, or gray has been ascertained (Berlin and Kay 1969:21-22).

Canadian Raising—the phonetic changes in vowel quality and quantity in the diphthongs /ai/ and/ au/ before voiceless consonants—has been of considerable importance to phonological theories ever since Joos (1975). The opaque interaction of Canadian Raising and flapping in words such as writer consitutes one of the main arguments for rule ordering in phonology (Chomsky and Halle 1968; Chambers 1975). Recently, Mielke, Armstrong, and Hume (2003) have challenged Joos’s phonemic splitting analysis and have argued that Canadian Raising, rather than being a productive phonological process, is a static lexicalized generalization implemented as a choice between allomorphic variants. A rebuttal to this allomorphic analysis is offered based on evidence that, for some speakers, Canadian Raising productively applies in novel morphological contexts, in language games, and in the phrasal phonology, none of which are amenable to an allomorphic analysis.

This article considers the origin of distinctly “québécois” phonological traits. Using data from the Atlas linguistique de l’Est du Canada (1980), the analysis examines the geographic distribution and history of two variables—/t/ and /d/ affrication and high vowel laxing — establishing that both are innovations of Canadian French, spreading from the influential urban centre of Montreal. In addition, the supposed uniformity of Canadian French and the robustness of the east-west dialect boundary are disputed. Finally, the article draws from data on two additional variables — the replacement of apical [r] by posterior [R] and the diphthongization of/ε:/ and /e:/ — to tie the nature of linguistic diffusion to the degree of consciousness of the change in question. The findings and model are relevant not only for the study of the origin and description of Canadian French, but also more broadly for the field of dialect geography.

This article presents an analysis of a Montreal French corpus of text messages and considers the link between text messaging, and both spoken and written language. This corpus is part of a larger corpus of text messages sent by mobile phone (Texto4-Science). Our study focuses on two morphosyntactic variables for which an important sociostylistic variation has been reported in Montreal French: the alternation between the strong pronouns nous/nous autres ‘we/us’ (as non clitics), and between the subject clitics on/nous ‘we’. Their comparison in the text messages corpus and in spoken corpora shows that while text messages tend to approximate spoken language, they are not a perfect reflection of it. Generally, the hybridity of text messages can be conceived in the following manner: text messages obey a double standard (spoken and orthographic) and allow for occasional transgressions (formal markers associated with the written language and nonstandard spelling reflecting the spoken language).

Strong similarities observed between babbling and first words suggest a universal foundation of word production in children. The aim of this work was to evaluate the role of biomechanical constraints on babbling and first words production in two children acquiring Tashlhiyt, a Berber language spoken in Morocco. When considering isolated sounds and syllable types, our data provided evidence for a universal basis for early vocal patterns. The subjects produced more stops, more coronals and labials, vowels preferentially belonging to the lower left part of the vowel space, and open syllables. However, they only partially confirmed the existence of the preferred CV combinations generally observed in the early production of children learning various languages. The comparison between babbling and first words revealed a linguistic continuity between the two periods but also some increasing complexity and diversification in the words, which can be explained by an increase of articulatory capacities.

There are two main approaches to the syntax of Korean relative clauses: the operator-movement analysis and the operator-binding analysis. Although the predictions made by the two analyses are clear, no consensus is found in the literature regarding the two approaches, as there is disagreement on what the facts are. This situation thus calls for adopting a controlled experimental methodology to obtain the relevant data. In this article, I present findings from two magnitude estimation task experiments that support the operator-movement analysis. Experiment 1 tested whether a subject gap can occur in islands in relative clauses and whether it can be replaced with an overt pronoun, and Experiment 2 tested whether an object gap can occur in islands in relative clauses and whether it can be replaced with an overt pronoun. In both experiments, a gap could not occur in an island and could not be replaced with an overt pronoun. According to these findings, relativization into islands is ruled out in Korean, and thus the operator-movement analysis is supported.

In child language, consonants often assimilate in primary place of articulation across intervening vowels. In adult language, primary place assimilation occurs only between adjacent consonants. In both cases, the first consonant usually assimilates to the second. The standard analysis of directionality of local assimilation in Optimality Theory uses positional faithfulness to protect the second consonant. In this article, it is argued that directionality in child language assimilation is due not to positional faithfulness, but to a markedness constraint that specifies that a consonant preceding a dorsal must agree in place of articulation with it. Along with directionality, this constraint accounts for cases in which dorsals, but not labials, trigger assimilation, which occurs in Korean as well as in child language. Differences between the attested types of assimilation in adult and child language can be explained by differences in the activity of positional faithfulness in the two domains.