It is a well-known fact that the verb dare can be used with either modal or main verb characteristics both in its inflection and in its syntax. When used as a modal, it drops the -s ending in the third person singular present indicative (She dare not mention it in his presence), has no imperative, infinitive or participial forms, takes direct negation by not, AUX-inverts in questions (Dare I ask you another question?) and is followed by the bare infinitive. In main verb use, on the other hand, it has all the normal forms of the verb, occurs with do auxiliary in negatives and interrogatives, and is construed with the to infinitive (She doesn’t dare to mention it in his presence).

The Notion of persistent rule in historical phonology has been discussed by Chafe in his important asticle on the order of phonological rules (Chafe 1968). Two examples are the wellknown devoicing of final obstruants in German - a rule added to the grammar of German at a point in time in its history, and still operative so that words introduced after the adding of the rule are subject to it; and the loss of final /n/ in Livonian, so that a word like /nainen/ first becomes /naine/, then is subject to a rule that eliminates final vowels, thus becoming /nain/, which, since the n-dropping rule is still in force, becomes /nai/. Rules are said to persist when they apply either to forms resulting from rules added later than they to the grammar of the language, or to forms introduced into the language from a source other than a later rule, i.e. through borrowing.

Les données présentées en (1) illustrent le cas des phrases dites “infinitives de narration”. De nombreux exemples sont attestés dans Sandfeld (1965), Le Bidois (1952), Grevisse (1961), Nyrop (1930), etc.

The Last twenty years of claims, counter-claims, and confusion in linguistic and psycholinguistic theory, and the accompanying proliferation of experimental literature without clear growth of knowledge has, if nothing else, demonstrated how remarkably little we can agree upon about language. We don’t seem able to decide on what it is, or where it is (‘out there’ or solely in the mind), let alone why it is. But, at least, our recent experiences have taught us something. We have learned a great deal about how not to proceed; and that, without cynicism, is a very important beginning.

This article explores event nominals in Mēbengokre, a Jê language spoken in the eastern Amazon region in Brazil. On the basis of data from this language, the article argues that event nouns are more basic than the verbs to which they are related, and develops an account of event nominals where a process of nominalization does not play a part. Though it is conceded that derivation from fully-fledged verbs to nouns and from non-eventive nouns to verbs generally exists in language, it is claimed that embedding of categories under other categories is a marked option that is only analytically justified when there is syntactic evidence of grammatical category mixing.

Blackfoot verbs are marked with nominal agreement morphology in relative clauses, in place of verbal inflection. These relative clauses have previously been analyzed as nominalizations. The present study shows that a nominalization analysis makes incorrect predictions about the morphological composition of relative clauses, as well as the availability of non-agentive and possessive constructions, and adjectival modification. This study demonstrates that relative clauses can relativize subjects, direct objects, and indirect objects. Based on observations about obviation, recursion, long-distance extraction, inflection, and word order, I propose that relative clauses are participles: clausal entities with a nominal superstructure. This accounts for their mixed clausal and nominal properties, and provides an analysis of Blackfoot relative clauses similar to those proposed for related Algonquian languages.

A long-standing problem in the reconstruction of proto-Italic has been the wide discrepancy between the Oscan/Umbrian and Latin perfectum markers. Latin for the most part employs either -s- or -u-/-v- throughout its perfect system, e.g. serp-s-it ‘he crawled’ (cf. pres. serp-it), al-u-it ‘he nourished’ (cf. pres. al-it), amā-v-it ‘he loved’ (cf. pres. ama-t). On the other hand, Osean and Umbrian have apparently created a number of new perfect formations: an f-perfect, shared by both (O. aíkda-f-ed ‘he decreed’, U. ateřa-f-ust ‘he will have made the circuit’); a -tt-formative found only in Osean (dadíka-tt-ed ‘he dedicated’) and in a few of the Minor Dialects; the -l- and *-nky- types, both peculiar to Umbrian (ape-l-ust ‘he will have offered up’, purdi-nsi-ust ‘he will have offered’).

A linguistic theory can be considered to have explanatory force if it may be extended to a body of facts considerably beyond the domain for which it was originally conceived. In general, the further the new domain is from the original, the greater the support that accrues to that theory. In this paper, a number of developments within current morphological and phonological theory will be utilized in the analysis of an extraordinary form of vocal behaviour, the katajjait (sg. katajjaq) or throat games of the Canadian Inuit. The result will be a revealing account of the structures of these katajjait, as well as a remarkable confirmation of principles of linguistic theory from a domain which has been hitherto unreported in the linguistic literature.

A number of interesting syntactic processes in a variety of Micronesian languages arose in response to a restructuring of Proto-Micronesian verbal morphology, the restructuring itself triggered by purely phonological changes. This article provides an account of these changes, revealing at the same time aspects of Proto-Micronesian clause structure which have not previously been noted.

This article attempts to reconstruct the plausible evolution of inflectional and free-standing morphemes in three historically related lusophone creoles (Cape Verdean Creole, Guinea-Bissau Creole, Papiamentu), and compares their morphological properties to Angolar, believed to have followed an independent developmental path. I examine their synchronic morphological properties and seek insights into their origins by studying Black speech in Portuguese 15th- and 16th-century literature. This reconstruction seeks to address several questions. Within the historically related creoles, is it possible to identify a set of formally and functionally common morphemes? If so, what is their source? Are they likely to have been inherited through diffusion? Are the common morphemes in the three related creoles distinct from those of Angolar or do they overlap?

In this article, I propose a phonetically-oriented constraint-based model of speech production that differs from recent approaches in assuming preservation constraints that refer directly to articulatory gestures rather than to perceptual cues. Articulatory gesture preservation constraints interact with a constraint that penalizes the expenditure of articulatory effort. Specific constraints and rankings are projected from a static perceptual knowledge source. Before exploring the model in detail, I address evidence that has been used to argue against precisely this type of “Articulatory Phonology-inspired” approach. The evidence, used to justify the claim that lenition cannot be modeled as gestural reduction alone, is shown to be problematic.

Le but du présent article est de présenter, sous une forme explicite, et d’illustrer trois des principes de base qui régissent la description sémantique des unités lexicales dans un dictionnaire explicatif et combinatoire (DEC). Il s’agit des principes suivants: principe d’adéquation, principe de pont sémantique, et principe d’uniformité. Le premier principe concerne un lexeme isolé; le deuxième, tous les lexemes appartenant à un vocable; et le troisième, les vocables différents qui sont sémantiquement apparentés.

Il convient de souligner que les principes énoncés sont depuis longtemps bien connus en lexicographie. Ce que nous revendiquons comme originalité, c’est le caractère formel et précis de leur formulation et, beaucoup plus important encore, le caractère strict et systématique de leur application.

This article questions the common usage of the concept of “linguistic variety” and the usual view of vernacular speech as the expression of a speaker’s identity. The term “variety” in linguistics has an ambiguous status: it is used to describe “linguistic representations” (social constructs) as well as actual linguistic practices. An alternative way of understanding the function of varieties in the sociolinguistic space is proposed: we explain how varieties relate to speech styles in a way that captures the social significance of linguistic variation. A case study about vowel lengthening in the French spoken in Belgium is then presented. Through both a quantitative and qualitative analysis, it is shown how marked regional variants are used to produce a particular social meaning, even among middle-class speakers.

Depuis une douzaine d’années, un certain nombre de principes ont été énoncés en phonologie générative pour tenter de rendre compte de l’adaptation et de la modification des mots d’emprunt. A l’aide des données qui ont été recueillies dans une étude détaillée de la phonologie des emprunts du québécois de la région de Montréal (cf. Nicol 1979), où l’anglais (A) constitue la langue d’origine (LO) et le québécois (Q) la langue emprunteuse (LE), nous essaierons de démontrer que tous les principes de ce genre, et en particulier ceux qu’ont émis Hyman (1970) et Kaye et Nykiel (1979), semblent faire de mauvaises prédictions dans nombre de cas. Ceci nous amènera à examiner des alternatives plus concrètes à ces contraintes phonotactiques abstraites que l’on a proposées dans le cadre de la phonologie générative transformationnelle.

This article discusses the morphological and syntactic structure of relative clauses in Ojibwe (Algonquian), in particular their status as wh-constructions. Relatives in this language are full clauses that bear special morphology, show evidence of A′-movement of a wh-operator, and consequently exhibit wh-agreement also found in interrogatives and certain types of focus constructions. Ojibwe shows the possibility of wh-agreement realized on T (in addition to C and v for other languages), as it appears on tense prefixes. We account for the realization of wh-agreement on T in Ojibwe via the mechanism of feature inheritance. We propose that while declarative matrix clauses are canonical in that C introduces φ-features in Ojibwe, the role of C in embedded or wh-contexts is to introduce δ-features (discourse features), such as [uwh], rather than φ-features. These δ-features can be introduced by C, but are transferred down to T where they spell out as wh-agreement.

When Powell published his exhaustive classification of the aboriginal languages of North America north of Mexico (1891), he set up 58 independent linguistic families. Since he was interested in establishing nomenclature as well as in determining families, he adopted the convention of adding the suffix -an or -ian to each of his proposed names. Even though it is desirable to have a uniform way of designating linguistic families, it turns out that the device has tended to obscure an extremely noteworthy fact about these families, namely that over 40 per cent of them are language isolates, that is, single languages with no demonstrable close relationship to any other single language or family of languages. Moreover, the majority of these language isolates were concentrated in two principal areas: (1) the “Pacific” area along the Pacific Coast from Southern Alaska to Baja California, and (2) the “Gulf” area along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Coahuila. Notwithstanding the fact that many of the language isolates of these two areas have now been subincluded in larger groupings, they remain, for the most part, but distantly related to their nearest congeners. For this reason they still play a significant role in imparting to these two large areas their distinctive character of great linguistic diversity.