This article argues that phonological features have no substantive properties, instead, segments are assigned features by learning strategies set to the task of devising a computational system for a phonology that is consistent with the requirements of UG. I address two problems for such a substance-free model. The first is the Card-Grammar problem, which has been suggested to argue for universal substantive features, on the premise that, otherwise, language data cannot be stored in a fashion necessary to correct learning errors. The Card Grammar problem disappears, in a suitably modular theory of mind with learned interfaces, where the mind still can retain information not parsed in a particular grammar. The second problem is the need for a demonstration, not just an assertion, that a reasonable theory of grammar and learning which has no access to phonetic substance can yield a coherent system of feature assignments. This is accomplished by modeling the learning of features necessary for the phonology of Kerewe.

This article’s main objective is to propose a synthesis of the large amount of data measuring the use of French and English in the Montreal region, and to analyse the main determinants of linguistic behaviour in Montreal’s private and public space. A brief discussion of the policy implications to be derived from the results of this analysis is also presented.

We argue that a multimodal approach to defining a depictive class of words called ‘ideophones’ by linguists is essential for grasping their meanings. Our argument for this approach is based on the formal properties of Pastaza Quichua ideophones, which set them apart from the non-ideophonic lexicon, and on the cultural assumptions brought by speakers to their use. We analyze deficiencies in past attempts to define this language's ideophones, which have used only audio data. We offer, instead, an audiovisual corpus which we call an ‘antidictionary’, because it defines words not with other words, but with clips featuring actual contexts of use. The major discovery revealed by studying these clips is that ideophones’ meanings can be clarified by means of a distinction found in modality and American Sign Language studies. This distinction between speaker-internal and speaker-external perspective is evident in the intonational and gestural details of ideophones’ use.

Although variants of the form [fri] and [bof] for standard [θri] ‘three’ and [boθ] ‘both’ are well attested in dialects as divergent as Cockney (Sivertsen 1960) and Black English Vernacular (Wolfram and Fasold 1974), there has been no attempt, to my knowledge, to treat these “substitutions” (a term with which they are frequently dismissed) as anything but isolated phenomena. Wyld (1936) and Dobson (1957), who are among the most respected authorities on English phonology, both specifically identify the [θ]/[f] alternation as an “isolative change.

En créole haïtien (CH), l’agglutination du déterminant dans certains items lexicaux empruntés au français réalise des paires minimales révélant dans la plupart des cas une distinction sémantique évidente entre la forme à déterminant préfixé et sa correspondante non agglutinée. Ceci est illustré dans l’opposition établie entre listoua ‘histoire’ et istoua ‘une histoire’. Quelle est la source d’un tel type de distinction?

Pour Baker (1984, 1986), la fréquence d’apparition d’un article particulier devant certains noms du français plutôt que d’autres constitue une condition préliminaire ayant favorisé l’agglutination du déterminant. L’influence de la structure morphologique des langues sources permet, quant à elle, d’expliquer l’inégale répartition de ce phénomène dans les différents créoles à base lexicale française.

Une série d’articles sur les consonnes épenthétiques est apparue dans les pages de cette revue ces dix dernières années: Walker (1978, 1981), Morin (1980), Singh (1980), Wetzels (1985), Piggott et Singh (1985) et Picard (1987), passant progressivement d’un problème très particulier (le statut phonologique en ancien français des consonnes épenthétiques issues du gallo-roman) à des théories générales sur l’épenthèse. Un certain nombre de données et d’analyses antérieures n’ont malheureusement pas été utilisées par le dernier de ces auteurs, conduisant ainsi à des généralisations hâtives et probablement fausses. Il est peut-être temps maintenant de rappeler quelques-unes des analyses antérieures et de revenir sur certaines de ces généralisations.

This study investigates the acquisition of English word-final consonants by Hong Kong Cantonese learners of English as a second language and assesses the validity of the Markedness Differential Hypothesis for second language phonology acquisition by these learners. Twelve participants and three native speakers performed four speech tasks: reading a word list, reading three passages, describing pictures, and participating in a conversational interview. The results show that: (i) word-finally, more non-target laterals were produced than voiceless obstruents; and (ii) non-target productions of voiced obstruents were the highest. We argue that the Markedness Differential Hypothesis does not explain the acquisition of English word-final singleton consonants by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong. We conclude that markedness alone cannot be used as a predictor for the relative difficulty of acquiring the target segments of a second language.

The aim of this article is to present a unified analysis of Romance past participle agreement. Data from 19 standard and non-standard Romance varieties are considered. It is shown that in order to account for the variation found across the various Romance varieties, past participle agreement should not be considered as following simply from another module of the grammar, such as Case Theory, coindexation or the theory of functional categories, but should rather be considered from the point of view of a general theory of grammatical agreement. It is also shown that past participle agreement must be treated as an example of nominal-modifier agreement rather than as an example of verb-argument agreement.

Le présent article décrit la constitution d’un corpus de français oral, baptisé les Récits du français québécois d’autrefois (RFQ), qui comprend des contes, des légendes et des entrevues recueillis auprès de locuteurs nés entre 1846 et 1895. Leur parler est celui du Québec rural du 19e siècle; il montre la variabilité inhérente et les structures vernaculaires caractéristiques des dialectes d’aujourd’hui. Nous examinons les avantages et les inconvénients de ces données diachroniques et montrons que, si elles sont utilisées judicieusement, elles représentent effectivement un stade antérieur du français québécois, avant son contact intense avec l’anglais. À ce titre, elles constituent un point de repère pour situer les traits linguistiques actuels. À partir d’une étude de cas de l’élision du ne, nous montrons comment une comparaison systématique entre les RFQ et le parler vernaculaire contemporain peut servir à repérer un changement linguistique, à le dater et à suivre son acheminement.

A few years ago, a writer in a Canadian magazine complained that the word snye was not defined in any dictionary even though the Canadian Board on Geographical Names had certified it as “a lawful and proper generic term.” Later, another writer in another journal complained that none of his dictionaries included the word mukluk. About the same time, a Canadian novelist writing about a semi-rural part of Queen’s, near New York City, referred to a character living “near the end of a concession road”; unwittingly, he was using a term that would be quite unintelligible to Americans and, no doubt, to some Canadians. Still another Canadian, a historian, having found the word carcajou in an eighteenth-century document on the fur trade, glossed it as “the American badger”; had he had access to a Canadian dictionary, he could have ascertained that carcajou was a common traders’ synonym for wolverine, the word having come into Canadian English from Canadian French, the coureur de bois having borrowed it from the Cree, who also gave the English traders the term quickhatch, yet another Canadian synonym, one that entered another door, so to speak.

These anecdotes illustrate the long-felt need for readily accessible information about Canadian English, past and present. Happily, the situation has much improved in recent years, ever since the first volume of the Dictionary of Canadian English series became available in 1962; this series, completed in 1967 and revised in many particulars since, was the first extensive attempt to satisfy the need for Canadian dictionaries. To this series belongs the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (Toronto: Gage, 1967), which attempts to provide a historical record of words that are peculiarly Canadian.

Rex Wilson has clearly demonstrated that tape recording is a useful technical aid for dialect field interviews, such as those for the Linguistic Atlas. In his own work, Wilson obviously and properly handles the tape as a tool, not as a substitute for the fieldworker. Nevertheless, since the New World too often assumes that the development of a gadget automatically solves a problem, one may justifiably emphasize a few of the pitfalls for the investigator who uses the tape uncritically — and this while being in substantial agreement with Wilson's position.

It is important, however, that such skepticism be not the skepticism of inexperience, which is too often evident in criticisms of tape recordings

Cet article est essentiellement extrait (avec les adaptations nécessaires) du mémoire de maîtrise (Lagacé, 1984) déposé en juin 1984, mais non publié, mémoire qui analysait les relations concessives et les structures syntaxiques connexes afin d’établir une systématique à la fois sémantique et syntaxique permettant de définir ce champ linguistique et de créer des outils d’analyse et d’exploration.

My starting point is the theory of CV phonology as developed by Clements and Keyser (1981, 1983) which, in turn, is one of a number of theories of syllable structure that have been proposed during the past decade to replace the earlier linear concept of generative phonology. These theories have in common that the syllable is recognized as a hierarchical unit in phonological representation and not just a concatenation of segments. Kahn (1976), whose dissertation on English first persuaded generative linguists of the need to depart from the linear model, proposed a tier of syllable nodes (here symbolized as $) linked directly to the segments — consonants and vowels — of the traditional analysis, as in the representation of the word Jennifer in (1) (taken from Clements and Keyser 1983:3).

Old French subject pronouns (Spro) were omissible if postverbal (Foulet 1928), but not freely so (Vance 1997, Zimmermann 2014). This article addresses their partial omissibility in discourse-syntax terms, following work on partial null subject languages by Holmberg and Nikanne (2002) and Modesto (2008). An observational study of dialogic responses in 13th century prose romances is first reported, finding strong indications of covariation between the Topic/Focus status of an initial non-subject constituent and the expression/omission of post-verbal Spro. A quantitative investigation, in such texts, of preposed discourse-linked anaphoric constituents and preposed intensifiers, taken as diagnostic of Topichood and Focushood respectively, confirmed this analysis. We take null Spro to be available (i) when a null Topic operator targets left-peripheral TopicP, and (ii) with a left-peripheral Focused expression. When a discourse-linked non-subject constituent occupies TopicP, however, Spro must be overt.

Le présent article porte sur la structure interne des constructions causatives du français. Son argumentation se base sur deux idées essentielles : que l'interprétation de respectivement révélerait l'effet d'intervention dans les constructions bi-propositionnelles, et que la montée du quantifieur serait soumise à la minimalité et à la Condition d'impénétrabilité des phases. J'utiliserai ces deux phénomènes comme tests pour justifier d'une part la relation morpho-syntaxique entre le verbe causatif faire et le verbe causativisé, et d'autre part la dérivation de l'ordre VOS (verbe-objet-sujet) du complément de faire. Je compte démontrer que les constructions causatives du français sont analogues aux constructions ECM (Exceptional Case Marking), qui impliquent un TP défectif enchâssé; et que l'ordre VOS du complément de faire, dans la construction faire-à et dans la construction faire-par, impliquent deux dérivations différentes. Le premier est dérivé par Object Shift, tandis que le deuxième est dérivé par Smuggling.

Nuu-chah-nulth presents a set of exceptions to Condition C of the Binding Theory that involves co-construal between certain R-expressions and a c-commanding pronoun. These exceptions to Condition C are not reducible to structural properties of the language, and are not confined to coreference anaphora, as they extend to bound variables without quantificational antecedents. Nuu-chah-nulth also shows strong crossover effects, and more generally obeys a strict c-command condition on variables bound by quantifiers. We account for these facts by distinguishing quantifier binding from other types of dependent reference, and parameterize the latter based on reverse dependency, where a pronoun may precede and/or c-command its antecedent. Reverse dependency reflects the non-presuppositional nature of Nuu-chah-nulth pronouns, which allows them to be introduced ahead of their descriptive content.