In this paper I provide cross-linguistic evidence for a functional projection between D and NP, which I call “Number Phrase” (NumP). In a full noun phrase, the head of this projection is, among other things, the locus of number specification (singular or plural) of a noun phrase. Pronominal noun phrases are distinguished from full noun phrases by the fact that they lack a lexical projection, i.e., they lack a NP. The existence of two distinct functional categories predicts the existence of at least two classes of pronouns, those of the category D, and those of the category Num. In both Modern Hebrew and Haitian, there is evidence that this prediction is borne out.

This Paper discusses a particular phonological rule that occurs in several English dialects, including Canadian English. The rule will be referred to throughout as ‘Canadian Raising’ purely for mnemonic purposes; no geographical rigour is intended by the epithet ‘Canadian’—a point that is made abundantly clear in §4, where the distribution of the rule is taken up. The appropriateness of the term resides in the relative role the rule plays in Canadian English, where its effect is the most readily identifiable trait of the dialect. Thus, speakers of Canadian English are often identified by the speakers of adjoining dialects by their pronunciation of words like wife and south, which are usually mis-heard by speakers of General American as weef and sooth.

The main facts about Canadian Raising were first organized systematically three decades ago by Martin Joos, in a short article entitled “A phonological dilemma in Canadian English” (1942). Since then, they have been cursorily referred to in the literature several times (for example: Bloomfield 1948: 62; McDavid 1963: 470, etc.) and have been reorganized in a different theoretical framework (Halle 1962: 343) with no augmentation—and usually a simplification—of Joos’s observations.

Current linguistic theory offers a highly detailed account of what linguistic competence consists of, as well as an indication of how that competence is acquired by L1 learners, via an innate Universal Grammar (UG). In second language (L2) acquisition, a major issue is the nature of the L2 learner’s competence and the degree to which it is similar to or different from the competence attained by native speakers. A theory of linguistic competence is essential to our understanding of what L2 competence might consist of, and should inform L2 acquisition research (Gregg 1989). In this paper, I will adopt certain recent proposals concerning verb movement and the functional categories Agreement and Tense (Chomsky 1989; Pollock 1989), and investigate whether these proposals can provide a suitable explanation of the linguistic behaviour of French learners of English.

The idea that constraints on well-formedness play a role in determining phonological alternations, which dates back at least to Kisseberth’s (1970) pioneering work, has by now achieved almost universal acceptance. A tacit assumption of this program, largely unquestioned even in recent research, is the notion that valid constraints must state true generalizations about surface structure or some other level of phonological representation. Anything different would seem antithetical to the very idea of a well-formedness constraint.

Many theorists (e.g., Hyams 1987; Pinker 1984) working in the framework of generative grammar have assumed the “Continuity Hypothesis”. Under this view language acquisition is made up of a series of continuous stages. The child moves from one stage to another, and at each stage the grammar posited by the child is determined by Universal Grammar (UG). The motivation for the movement from one stage to another comes from a trigger in the language environment which causes the child to restructure her grammar, and so move on to the next stage. The Continuity Hypothesis has provided an explanation for the acquisition of many linguistic structures; however, in many instances it has been difficult to explain exactly which data in the language environment act as a trigger, and why they have an effect on the child’s grammar.

This paper examines cognate object (CO) constructions such as those in (1).

1. 1. a. Dorothea smiled a smile.

   2. b. Dorothea smiled a wicked smile.

   3. c. Dorothea has smiled all her smiles.

The central question which is raised by such constructions regards the status of the CO with respect to both its syntax and its semantics. That this question is not a new one, nor one confined to theoretical linguistics is seen in Harper’s English Grammar where we read: “Some authorities . . . contend that cognate verbs — verbs which are followed by objects that repeat their meaning — are intransitive. However the verbs in such expressions as He slept a peaceful sleep and He lived a useful life are by the majority of grammarians regarded as transitive verbs” (Opdycke 1941:106).

This article explores an unexpected extraction pattern out of adjuncts, as in What did John die whistling? and What did John hurt himself trying to fix? in English. This type of extraction is possible if the adjuncts are predicative and the matrix verbs are either ergative or (inherent) reflexive. The predicativity of the adjuncts is essential in getting these adjuncts interpreted as arguments; this requires coindexation with a thematic role of the verb, which is shown to obtain. Once transparent adjuncts are integrated into the thematic structure of the clause, the resulting representation exhibits the hallmarks of reflexivity. Reflexive predicates must receive appropriate marking. This explains the second requirement on transparent adjuncts: the matrix verbs are precisely of the type capable of licensing reflexivity.

Bilingualism is not a phenomenon of language; it is a characteristic of its use. It is not a feature of the code but of the message. It does not belong to the domain of “langue” but of “parole.”

If language is the property of the group, bilingualism is the property of the individual. An individual’s use of two languages supposes the existence of two different language communities; it does not suppose the existence of a bilingual community. The bilingual community can only be regarded as a dependent collection of individuals who have reasons for being bilingual. A self-sufficient bilingual community has no reason to remain bilingual, since a closed community in which everyone is fluent in two languages could get along just as well with one language. As long as there are different monolingual communities, however, there is likelihood of contact between them; this contact results in bilingualism.

This paper is concerned with sentential subjects and sentential objects, subordinate clauses which function as subject or object of their sentence. The clause that John is tall is a sentential subject in (1) and a sentential object in (2):

1. (1) That John is tall is obvious.

2. (2) Bill knows that John is tall.

This paper is concerned in particular with the clause positions in which such sentential subjects and objects, henceforth sentential noun phrases (or NP’s), tend to occur in different languages. In (1), the sentential subject is in clause-initial position. In (2), the sentential object is in clause-final position. More precisely, this paper is concerned with the differences between the position of sentential NP’s and the position of simple NP’s (i.e. nonsentential NP’s). For example, the position of the sentential subject in (1) is also the normal position for simple NP subjects. If we replace the sentential subject in (1) by the simple NP the conclusion, we get (3):

(3) The conclusion is obvious.

L’étude de la genèse des langues créoles fait partie de la problématique plus générale d’une théorie de la variation et du changement linguistique dans les langues naturelles. Même si la genèse des langues créoles se démarque de la genèse des autres langues, tant par les circonstances historiques dans lesquelles elles se développent, que par les dérivations linguistiques qui les caractérisent, l’origine des langues créoles doit être expliquée à l’intérieur du même cadre que les autres langues. Cependent, étant donné les propriétés uniques de leur origine, l’étude des langues créoles offre une contrainte de plus sur la forme de la théorie linguistique en générale. Ce qui est unique et extraordinaire à propos des langues créoles c’est surtout le partage systématique de leurs propriétés par rapport aux propriétés de leurs langues sources. Il existe une théorie de la genèse des langues qui permet d’expliquer la systématicité de ce partage: la relexification Nous montrerons que cette théorie fournit les bases d’une explication du processus de formation des langues créoles. Cet article a pour objectif de construire une théorie de la genèse du créole haïtien qui soit explicative des faits linguistiques et qui soit compatible avec les faits historiques qui prévalaient lors de sa formation. Nous constatons qu’une telle théorie doit être révélatrice de la nature de la grammaire universelle qui définit la forme des langues naturelles.

Derivational morphology is one of the most difficult and least studied of all the areas of linguistic description (cf. Lightner, 1968:71). There are two main problems which are largely responsible for this. The first is the question of morpheme recognition or lexical identity: how similar in meaning or in sound do two words have to be in order for the linguist or language learner to identify a common morphemic unit and thus to see a morphological relationship between the words? (This problem is discussed in detail in Derwing, 1973: 122-6.) Many of the morphological rules which are proposed by linguists, whether morphophonemic or phonotactic in presumed character, are posited primarily, if not solely, in order to capture certain kinds of supposed ‘lexical redundancies,’ i.e., systematic variations which appear in the phonological form of the same morpheme when the morpheme occurs in different syntactic constructions. The viability of all such rules is thus directly contingent upon the assumption that the words involved do, in fact, share a common morpheme. Consider, for example, the morphophonemic rule which Chomsky proposes for English which changes a /d/ to an /s/ before the suffix /lv/, and the phonotactic rule which changes a /d/ plus /i/ or /y/ into a /ž/ before a vowel (1964:90); both of these rules are motivated by the presumed fact that the English words decisive and decision, for example, contain in their ‘underlying’ or ‘lexical’ representations the common morpheme decide. But how does one decide whether this claim is justified for ordinary native speakers of the language, particularly in some of the more problematical cases discussed in Derwing (1973)?

This paper proposes a formulation of the Subjacency condition and related parametric variation in terms of the notion “barrier” of Chomsky (1986), adapting features of the analysis of Lasnik and Saito (1989). The discussion centers around topic constructions such as (1) and what will be referred to here as the topic island effect, illustrated in (2):

• (1) Under the table Bill noticed a small iron box.

• (2)

  • a. *What under the table did Bill notice?

  • b. *I wonder what under the table Bill noticed.

  • c. *The box that under the table Bill noticed was locked.

This paper describes an empirical investigation as to the utility of a principles and parameters model of grammar in describing the interlanguage grammars of second language learners. I argue that the framework of parameterized universal grammar is useful in accounting for second language learner knowledge and behaviour. The vast majority of their errors can be accounted for by the transfer of their first language (L1) parameter setting into the second language (L2).

In a recent paper Kiparsky 1971 has proposed the notion of rule opacity to account for certain phenomena which eluded explanation under earlier formulations utilizing such concepts as feeding and bleeding. While I feel that Kiparsky’s proposal is basically sound, there are a few minor problems associated with the concept of rule opacity as postulated by Kiparsky. I will deal with these problems in this paper.

This article presents and discusses data on nominative and object clitics used by twelve monolingual French-speaking children aged 2;0 to 2;7 years in a spontaneous interaction setting and in an elicited production task. It is shown that nominative clitics surpass object clitics, and that reflexive clitics fare better than accusative clitics. It is argued that these two dissociations are compatible with the computational complexity hypothesis put forth by Jakubowicz and Nash (to appear), applied to the analysis of third person Romance pronominal clitics proposed by Jakubowicz, Nash, Rigaut, and Gérard (1998).

Patterns of vowel harmony are frequently interrupted by the presence of neutral segments, segments that are obligatorily realised with only one of the harmonic values. Peripherally, neutral segments appear in two patterns, referred to as relative and absolute alignment. Medially, such neutral segments may be opaque, interrupting the transmission of harmony, or they may be transparent, skipped over by harmony. It is argued that the properties of neutrality result from the interaction of three independently motivated families of constraints: faithfulness, alignment, and grounding. No process-specific constraints distinguishing between the types of alignment or between opacity and transparency are required under the proposed account.

In a somewhat condescending review of A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles some years ago, Mavor Moore complained about “a slighting of spoken practice and of distinctive Canadian syntax,” among his objections being the absence of an entry for eh?, for “both the English and the Americans can spot a Canadian from his ‘eh?’ at the end of a sentence: ‘It’s hot, eh?’” Admittedly, the interjection is not in the DC; moreover, there are no slips for eh? in the citation files of the Lexicographical Centre for Canadian English. This situation certainly indicates that the readers for the DC did not consider it a Canadianism: either that or they were unaware that eh? might be relevant to the collection.

The second of these possibilities may be set aside, for eh? is, in fact, entered in the Intermediate Dictionary and the Senior Dictionary, general dictionaries of English published in Canada for Canadians as part of the Dictionary of Canadian English series, to which the DC belongs. It should be added that eh? is also entered in every general dictionary of English, both British and American, on my shelves—a very considerable collection indeed, and one which includes the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster’s New International Dictionary (Third Edition).

The paper surveys overlap between corpus linguistics and variationist sociolinguistics. Corpus linguistics is customarily defined as a methodology that bases claims about language on usage patterns in collections of naturalistic, authentic speech or text. Because this is what is typically done in variationist sociolinguistics work, I argue that variationist sociolinguists are by definition corpus linguists, though of course the reverse is not true: the variationist method entails more than merely analyzing usage data, and not all corpus analysts are interested in variation. But that being said, a considerable and arguably increasing number of corpus linguists not formally trained in variationist sociolinguistics are explicitly concerned with variation and engage in what I call corpus-based variationist linguistics (CVL). I first discuss what unites or divides work in CVL and in variationist sociolinguistics. In a plea to cross subdisciplinary boundaries, I subsequently identify three research areas where variationist sociolinguists may draw inspiration from work in CVL: conducting multi-variable research, paying more attention to probabilistic grammars, and taking more seriously the register-sensitivity of variation patterns.

Introduction. Despite a rather extensive literature on the subject, most research on the nature of infant speech can be characterized as impressionistically descriptive, or anecdotal, or speculative, or some combination thereof. Such studies have by and large ignored the structure, function and natural history of early vocal behaviour, an empirically adequate specification of which is a necessary prerequisite to an understanding of the development of infant vocalizations and of their relationship to later linguistic usage. Likewise, reports have generally failed to recognize the dynamic interactions within the developing organism as a whole, eschewing discussion of concomitant neurophysiological maturation and cognitive growth. While detailed consideration falls beyond the scope of the present paper, some insight into the issues involved may be gained from recent treatises dealing with brain development (Jacobson, 1975), myelogenesis (Lecours, 1975) and the ontogeny of cerebral dominance (Zangwill, 1975). Problems relating to speech input and output requirements in acquisition have been treated by Mattingly (1973), and the interplay of physiological-cognitive factors with respect to early speech perception and production has been critically overviewed by Gilbert (1975). Suffice it to say that until experimental evidence can be adduced, interpreted and properly interwoven into a coherent description, definitive theories on the acquisition and development of speech and language must perforce remain only as desiderata.

This article examines differential substitution of the L2 English voiceless interdental fricative, [θ]. The L1s investigated in this study—European French, Québec French, and Japanese—have been reported to substitute [s], [t], and [s] respectively in production. Two main hypotheses are explored: 1) Transfer is perceptually based; 2) Substitution involves an assessment of non-contrastive in addition to contrastive features. Results of an AXB task show that advanced learners are unable to perceive certain non-contrastive distinctions; however, unlike Japanese listeners, French listeners do perceive Strident and Mellow, features which are non-contrastive in their L1. Results indicate a clear perceptual basis for the Japanese substitute. The difference between Québec and European French is less clear; however, there is a trend which suggests a perceptual basis for the European French substitute. Another finding is that confusion of [f] and [θ] is greater for French than it is for Japanese listeners. It is proposed that the composition of the L1 phonetic inventory influences which features listeners attend to during perception.