This article is a reanalysis of cluster simplification in Quebec French (QF) in terms of government-licensing, a condition which requires non-nuclear governing heads to be licensed by a following vowel. It is suggested, contra Côté (1997, 1998), that simplification is triggered by a structural constraint rather than a constraint on sonority. It is shown that in QF, simplification does not apply to word internal clusters such as appartement and vendredi because the following vowel is realized, but applies to forms like table and casque, and converts them into [tab] and [kas] respectively at the surface level due to the lack of a final vowel. However, cluster reduction does not apply to final clusters such as barbe, gorge, and solde in which the first member is a liquid. To account for why simplification applies in one case and not in the other, it is suggested that the two types of final clusters differ with respect to syllabification: liquids are within branching nuclei, whereas the first member of other clusters is within a branching rhyme. The case of word-final cluster simplification attested in Haitian Creole is also examined.

This article investigates gerundive and infinitival constructions with the verbs intend, mean, propose and their close synonyms with respect to the abstract categories of “tense” and “control”. Concerning “tense”, the gerundive construction with these verbs constitutes counterevidence to the common claim that the -ing form denotes simultaneity or temporal overlap: the explanation proposed shows that the latter does not correspond to any of the usual aspectual categories found in the linguistic literature. With respect to “control”, an explanation is offered for the tighter constraints on infinitival constructions as compared to the latitude between subject control and non-subject control readings found with the -ing form. These phenomena are explained in terms of the language-specific parameters of the basic meanings of the forms making up the constructions and the syntactic relations linking these meanings together.

This article argues that VOS structures in Romanian are derived from a basic VSO word order and, consequently, involve object raising out of VP, across the subject left in situ. Binding interactions and the availability of raising quantified NPs clause-medially provide syntactic support for an A-movement analysis of the raised objects. In contrast to other languages that allow (or require) movement of objects to argumental positions, it is argued that in Romanian VOS structures the object does not move for the purposes of Case checking nor does object raising entail a strong, definite interpretation of the moved NP. Rather, object raising is an instance of de-focussing, made possible by a strong nominal feature on the abstract verb v.

Paradis and LaCharité (1996, 1997) have proposed a model of loanword adaptation, couched within the Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies (Paradis 1988a,b). One of the mechanisms used in their model, called the Threshold Principle, first advanced by Paradis, Lebel, and LaCharité (1993), poses problems. This principle, whose implementation implies arithmetic counting, goes counter to standard views of generative phonology against counting. In this article, an analysis of deletion contexts found in loanwords which accounts for the data observed on structural grounds only is developed without any appeal to arithmetic counting. Based on the adaptation of French rising diphthongs and nasal vowels in two languages, Fula and Kinyarwanda, it is argued that an analysis based solely on the segmental representations of the foreign forms to adapt and the segmental and syllabic constraints of the borrowing language is sufficient to make correct predictions regarding the adaptation patterns found in these languages.

This article is concerned with cognate objects (COs) in Russian, of which there are shown to be two types. Only one type of CO exhibits argument properties, while the other type is shown to pattern with predicative nominals. Furthermore, it is argued that the two types of COs pattern with non-cognate nominals with the same function. It is therefore proposed to analyze argument COs on a par with their non-cognate counterparts as thematic direct objects, checking their accusative case in the specifier of Aspect Phrase. In contrast, the non-argument COs are analyzed as secondary predicates over the event argument projected by the main predicate of the clause. Finally, it is argued that a narrow, English-based definition of a CO (i.e., based on zero affixation) cannot be applied to other languages with richer derivational morphology. Yet, once the definition is widened to include all nominals based on the same root as the verb, it is concluded that being cognate is not relevant for the theory of syntax and must therefore be relegated to the morphological component of the language.

The standard structural approach to word blends, such as noise1/sound2 → nound, has been to assume they involve a splicing together of the two words, where part of word2 is used to complete part of word1. The splice position has then been used as the source of mental lexicon generalizations. On the basis of 166 naturally occurring word blends, this article argues for a different approach—a “substitution” approach. The approach allows a comparison of the properties that word blends share with sublexical exchanges, anticipations, perseverations and substitutions; in addition, it accounts for the convergence of these properties. The substitution analysis allows a principled distinction between target and intruder; it predicts metrical structure output, and possible and impossible errors; moreover, the substitution analysis simplifies and constrains language production models.

Québec City has had an anglophone community for 250 years. A representative sample of this community was surveyed using the methods known as Dialect Topography. The analysis establishes the distinctiveness of Québec City English but at the same time shows that it is firmly planted in the Canadian English speech community. It is shown that there are significant correlations with three social factors: (1) Language Use Index, which allows a calculation of the extent of each respondent’s use of English in the francophone setting; (2) age, the principal correlate of changes in progress; and (3) Regionality Index, which separates indigènes, the natives of the region, from interlopers, recent arrivals. Although the results show that the distinctiveness may be threatened by the persistence of interloper variants, in most respects Québec City English favours the same variants as the rest of Canada, albeit with different frequencies and often with a unique historical development.

Of 3,570 segmental malformations found in three corpora of English loanwords in French, h is the only segment that is never substituted. While interdentals are systematically adapted, h is systematically deleted. We attribute this to the fact that French — like Italian and Portuguese, where h is also deleted — does not phonologically employ the Pharyngeal node, the primitive essential in the adaptation of gutturals. The primitive cannot be dealt with (substituted or deleted), thus blocking phonetic interpretation of h. We encode this formally in the Non-availability Principle. Spanish, Greek and Russian, which employ the Pharyngeal node, replace h with the velar fricative x, a native sound, just as Fula replaces Arabic pharyngeals that it lacks with native laryngeals. The Non-availability Principle predicts that gutturals, whose sole articulatory specification is Pharyngeal (as is the case of Arabic pharyngeals and laryngeals) will be deleted in a language like French. This is confirmed. The Pharyngeal node, like tones and lexical accent, constitutes an unavailable primitive in French.