Progress in linguistic theory during the past 20 years has made it increasingly clear that language acquisition must be viewed as an essentially deductive process in which the child analyzes the input data s/he is exposed to on the basis of an innately specified set of restrictive principles — technically known as Universal Grammar — which narrowly constrain the kinds of hypotheses a child will consider vis-à-vis a given set of data (cf. Chomsky 1980, 1981, 1986; Hornstein and Lightfoot 1981; White 1982; Felix 1987). As a consequence, there is a growing interest in the question of how exactly principles of Universal Grammar interact with the child’s linguistic experience during the course of language acquisition (see e.g., Pinker 1984; Hyams 1986; Lust 1986b; Roeper and Williams 1987 among others for some more recent proposals). It appears that there are currently at least two competing views about the nature of this interaction. One of these views which I shall call “perceptionism” holds that the task of Universal Grammar (UG) is essentially restricted to constraining the types of intermediate grammars that the child will construct, while the developmental process itself is essentially data-driven, i.e., driven by the child’s (changing) perception of the external evidence. The other view which may be termed “maturationism” claims that UG is both responsible for the types of (intermediate) grammars that in principle may emerge and at the same time for the specific nature of the developmental process. Under the maturationist view language acquisition is therefore seen as a process that is driven primarily by internal, i.e., biologically determined maturational mechanisms.

In this article, two approaches to schwa representation are evaluated using data from four German children (aged 1;3 to 3;1). The first, the No Mora account, claims that schwa is segmentally but not prosodically specified, whereas the second, the Projection account, proposes that schwa is prosodically but only minimally segmentally specified, as [-cons]. The data reveal several stages in acquisition: an early phase characterised by vowel reduplication or deletion; a middle phase characterised by production of a full vowel (and consonant); and a final phase characterised by production of a central vowel, schwa, or syllabic consonant. In addition, the data show that children produce syllabic consonants earlier than schwa, and that they often produce filler schwas even when they substitute target schwas with full vowels. It is argued that these findings, in particular the different timeline observed for schwa versus syllabic consonants and the presence of filler schwas, can be best accounted for by the Projection account.

We argue that the representational primes of the human phonological faculty, the so-called distinctive features, are innate and substance-free. Our arguments for the innateness of features are built on traditional and novel logical arguments, experimental evidence accumulating over recent decades, and somewhat detailed proposals about their neurobiological reality. As symbols in the brain, features are substance-free, that is, they are devoid of articulatory and acoustic content, or even any direct reference to such phenomena. This is consistent with our substance-free conception of phonological computation, an approach that eschews functionalist notions like markedness, ease of articulation, and so on. We also outline a neural model of the phonetics-phonology interface called Cognitive Phonetics, which transduces innate features to speech articulation and from speech acoustics. These extra-grammatical transduction procedures are also part of the human biological endowment, which leaves no room for language-specific phonetics in our theory of the externalization of language. We show how Cognitive Phonetics can account for traditionally recognized intersegmental coarticulation, as well as the previously unexplored intrasegmental coarticulation, strongly suggesting that the basic units of speech production are transduced features.

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 proposes a novel account of noun incorporation in NorthernIroquoian. It is proposed that there is no special mechanism for nounincorporation and that this phenomenon falls out naturally from the geometry ofthe phrase structure under Moro’s theory of Dynamic Antisymmetry. In anutshell, when the verbal head and the nominal head undergo Merge, they form apoint of symmetric c-command, which is resolved by the nominal head moving tothe specifier of the verb phrase. Further, it is proposed that, in nounincorporation constructions with a full DP double, the incorporated noun and theDP form a constituent, which is merged in theta-position.

In the Manchu languages, contrast plays an important role in the patterning of vowel systems. Contrastive feature values are phonologically active, triggering rules of Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) and labial harmony, whereas redundant feature values are phonologically inert. To determine which feature values are contrastive in any given segment, it is necessary to establish an ordering of features. This ordering, or contrastive hierarchy, determines the relative contrastive scope of each feature. Our analysis of the Written Manchu contrastive hierarchy is supported by synchronic and diachronic evidence from Spoken Manchu and Xibe, where a realignment of vowel contrasts results in new patterns of phonological activity. We show that our analysis is consistent with the observed typology of ATR and labial harmony systems. We argue that the concept of phonological contrast does not reduce to a phonetic function, nor is it perceptually based. The relationship between contrast and underspecification is considered, and it is shown that constraint-based theories (such as Optimality Theory) do not constitute alternatives to the theory of contrast proposed here.

This paper deals with noun complements in French. I show that French has a particular kind of noun complement, regularly expressed by [de NP], that cannot be analysed as a PP or as a Possessor, but nevertheless requires a syntactic account. A detailed analysis reveals that these constituents share morphosyntactic, semantic and discourse properties with those of pseudo-incorporated nominals in various languages. I thus propose that they be analysed as pseudo-incorporated into a possessive nominal head.

The ambivalence of Canadian English spelling, which recognizes both British orthodoxy and Noah Webster’s innovations, is one of the many indicators of Canada’s role as a half-way house between Europe and the United States. Unlike the latter, which cut itself off from its European roots and has not infrequently drifted towards isolationism, Canada has maintained strong links with both Britain and France. This situation is reflected in the study and teaching of linguistics in Canadian universities. Stemming from the British, French, and American traditions, there is considerable diversity of theoretical position, which can be a great strength insofar as it leads to a dialectic, to a tolerance of others’ prejudices and a willingness to smile at one’s own. The dialectic—the push and pull of argument between different points of view—can also lead to a better understanding of the various schools of linguistics (including one’s own), and how they differ.

Similarities between varieties of the same languages can be explained in terms of shared retentions or innovations. Conversely, differences can be explained in terms of new vocabulary items, divergent changes, language contact, and dialect contact. The latter has been challenged by proponents of monogenetic theories. Evidence for and against monogenetic hypotheses are considered on the basis of two case studies. First, I demonstrate that the dialect enclave of Lunenberg County, Nova Scotia, is a mixed colonial dialect. Second, I argue that the phenomenon of Canadian Raising is the result of dialect mixture. The Canadian English data provide evidence for a connection between dialect contact, mixture, and genesis. The data support the idea that there is a deterministic outcome in situations where the target language is not spoken by a prior-existing population, which in turn accounts for why widely separated varieties of English are similar.

Dans cet article, je propose une analyse de la voyelle initiale des noms en kabyle. Je proposerai dans cette contribution une représentation dans le cadre CVCV (Lowenstamm 1996, Scheer 2004) qui montre que la phonologie peut rendre compte de l'alternance de l'initiale des noms sans recourir à la computation syntaxique. Je propose que la voyelle initiale instable qui caractérise l’état libre (EL) s'associe à son propre CV, et que le w- à l’état d'annexion (EA) est associé à un CV- initial. Je montrerai également pourquoi, devant #_CV à l’état d'annexion, si le mot est précédé d'un autre mot à finale consonantique, les glides w/j sont réalisés comme des voyelles pleines u/i. Cet article propose une analyse qui prend en compte cette alternance, contrôlée à la fois par le contexte droit (__CV vs __CC) et le contexte gauche (mot précédent à finale vocalique vs consonantique).

In this article, we consider legal notices of various forms, including imperative, indicative, and non-sentential. We argue that these convey various illocutionary forces depending on their particular content. In particular, those that prohibit actions — unlike laws that do so — typically have “directive” illocutionary force, with different linguistic classes of legal notices achieving this force through different means, given their distinct linguistic properties. We propose a “bare phrase” treatment of non-sentential notices, whereby these are underlyingly and not just superficially non-sentential; and a semantic treatment in terms of Discourse Representation Theory, which perspicuously describes their contribution to interpretation. Finally, we argue that assigning such sparse syntactic and semantic representations to non-sentential notices has conceptual and empirical advantages over analyses that posit richer underlying structure, capturing a broader range of data, including patterns involving default case and the absence of articles, and minimizing the need to posit linguistic ambiguity.

The concept that the auditory discrimination of phonemic differences in a foreign language is influenced by the phonemic contrast of the native language is certainly not new. A considerable amount of research has been done in the general area of auditory discrimination and the results of such research tend to prove the more or less expected: Those sound differences which are utilized by the phonemic system of the native language are perceived more easily than those which do not correspond to a native phonemic opposition. The pedagogical applications of this principle are fairly obvious and far reaching. In the learning of a second language, particular emphasis must be placed on the development of auditory discrimination between sounds which have no acoustic counterpart or near relative in the system of the learner. Thus one of the prerequisites of the teaching of pronunciation is the comparison of the sound system of the native language with that of the language to be learned and the development of auditory discrimination drills involving the phonemes revealed as difficult by the comparison. Usually the auditory discrimination drills take the form of listening to and repeating minimal pairs differentiated by the difficult sounds.

Over the past several years, a considerable amount of research on language comprehension has been carried out under the assumption that comprehension crucially involves language-independent cognitive strategies interacting with grammatical properties specific to a given language. Accordingly, the two factors of grammatical structure and cognitive strategies interact to render certain structures relatively more difficult to process than others. For example, it has been suggested that centre-embedded structures are more difficult to process than right-branching structures because centre-embedding interrupts the main clause and imposes a burden on short term memory, thereby making it relatively more difficult for the hearer to obtain closure on the entire sentence (Kuno 1974). Much attention within the cognitive strategies paradigm has been addressed to the comprehension of English complex sentences, and in particular to those sentences containing relative clauses. Since English permits relative clauses to be attached to NPs playing almost any grammatical role, and since, within a relative clause, the relativized NP can itself play almost any role, sentences containing relative clauses have provided a useful arena for testing various proposed cognitive strategies insofar as they relate to complex structures. In particular, much research has been addressed to SVO sentences in which a relative clause is formed on either the subject or object NP, and in which the relative pronoun is either subject or object.

I advance the thesis that the narrow syntactic component of CHL is purely symmetrical, with all apparent asymmetries reducing to interface conditions. Properties of Germanic object shift and scrambling, in particular the VO order-preservation (Holmberg’s Generalization), derive from symmetry-breaking strategies which dispose of superfluous (symmetric) syntactic information and ensure the PF-legibility (linearization). These interface desymmetrization strategies provide a Minimalist analysis of non-lexical (macro-)parameters, such as the head-directionality parameter.

The Linear Correspondence Axiom is reconciled with the VO/OV head parameter such that linear “shape” is preserved across the derivation. This allows object shift and scrambling to emerge as two sides of a single parametric coin. The implications of this system for the A/A-bar movement typology are explored, and a Minimalist reconceptualization is offered.

This paper should be considered a sequel to the paper read at the meetings of the Canadian Linguistic Association at Kingston in June 1960 and to be published in the Proceedings of the Learned Societies of Canada; in the first paper, the linguistic theories of J. R. Firth (and which are summarised in section 1.0. 1.1, and 1.11 of this paper) were outlined, and in this article the procedures at the different levels (Firth himself has used the term “spectrum analysis”) of the analysis of a text are described and copiously illustrated from the works of Firth and his associates. These methods have been developed by Professor Firth and his colleagues in London on the lines of the linguistic theory promulgated by Professor Firth and adumbrated in the original paper. This article concludes with a detailed bibliography of the writings of Firth and his colleagues; reference is also made to the work of other scholars who have discussed Firth’s linguistic theories.