Traditional approaches to natural language processing (NLP) can be considered construction-based. That is to say, they employ surface oriented, language specific rules, whether in the form of an Augmented Transition Network (ATN), logic grammar or some other grammar/parsing formalism. The problems of such approaches have always been apparent; they involve large sets of rules, often ad hoc, and their adequacy with respect to the grammar of the language is difficult to ensure.

In Late Latin the consonantalization of unstressed nonlow front vowels in hiatus gave rise to consonant + yod sequences. These clusters, which were absent in Classical Latin, became subject to a number of phonological processes as diverse as palatalization, affrication, gemination, palatal diphthongization and lenition. Some of these changes occurred in all dialects, others were limited to a number of them. The primary aim of this study is to provide a detailed nonlinear analysis of the above-mentioned processes, which, although well-documented in philological studies, have never received a proper formal treatment.

This article is concerned with WH-words and WH-constructions in Prince Edward Island Acadian French (PEIAF). The principal data come from the French variety spoken in the small community of Abram-Village in the Evangeline region located in the northwest of the island. French is a minority language in Prince Edward Island, spoken as a first language by less than 6% of the population according to the 1986 census. The number of French speakers has declined sharply over the last several decades but in the Evangeline region the francophone population is stable and French enjoys both institutional support and considerable language loyalty. The majority of Abram-Village residents, educated in French-medium schools, are fluently bilingual in French and English.