In a brief declaration in the last issue of this journal, our colleagues P. Drysdale, W. Mackey and M. Scargill outlined their objections to the Smith-Trager description of English stress, pitch and juncture. Their article calls into question the most fundamental American research works in English linguistics. At the outset, we would like to observe that in adopting attitudes towards the great tradition of linguistics in the United States, it is imperative that we avoid the two extremes of total belief and of rash rejection. This tradition is the product of several decades of intense, patient research by men with eminent ability to observe sounds and patterns, and an extraordinary flair for generating verifiable hypotheses. Thus the critic can condemn any part of the tradition only when he can demonstrate that it is false. On the other hand, the American tradition is empirical and positivist. It is evolving rapidly, and its conclusions and postulates are constantly being modified. Furthermore, it is not a monolithic tradition. Though there is a consensus of views at any given time, there are also hot debates, such as the current one on the interpretation of the English vowels and suprasegmentals. Thus anyone who believes this year’s conclusions may soon find himself cherishing obsolete positions that their originators have long transcended.

The structural linguist has recently begun to pay more and more attention not only to the sequences of the phonemes of a language but also to their capacity for combination. Trubetzkoy said: “La neutralisation des oppositions phonologiques est sûrement le phénomène le plus important, mais nullement le seul important dans le domaine de la théorie des combinaisons”. Much has been done on the distribution of these phonemic combinations and their functional yield, but little to determine and systematise the frequency of such occurrences, and to deduce from them some general principle. This is particularly true with reference to the consonantal clusters of the French language, though more has been done with other languages especially English.

This article examines the effects of direct object definiteness in Austronesian (AN) and relates these effects to marking for transitivity. Definite objects often correlate with a high degree of transitive marking in the verb phrase, while indefinite objects correlate with or trigger intransitive marking, even in transitive sentences. The primacy of goal/object orientation over actor/subject orientation is another widespread tendency in AN languages. In some languages, a definite goal/object must be marked as the focus of the clause, either overtly or via the obligatory indefiniteness of other arguments, or by making it the syntactic subject, or in other ways. The article thus shows how definiteness restrictions on various arguments in AN languages can be explained against the background of historical focus systems. Data come primarily from Muna (Celebes), in which, it is argued, the historical object focus function is continued in verb forms marked explicitly for definite objects.

Le but de cet article est d’étudier les caractéristiques syntaxiques du quantifieur universel kakina (‘tous’/‘chacun’) en algonquin, un dialecte ojibwe parlé au sud-ouest du Québec. J’examine la diversité des positions que peut occuper le quantifieur kakina dans la phrase simple ainsi que ses possibilités d’interprétation. Je recherche quels méchanismes syntaxiques ou morphologiques permettent de relier le quantifieur à ses arguments. Les données présentées ici ont été élicitées et reconfirmées auprès d’une locutrice de langue maternelle algonquine, bilingue algonquin-anglais, agée d’une cinquantaine d’années, vivant et enseignant à Kitigan-Zibi (Maniwaki, Québec) et employant sa langue quotidiennement.

Number discord between subject and verb raises a theoretical problem for which linguists have, as yet, provided no satisfactory answer. Since facts of both morphology and syntax are involved, it is a problem which brings into focus the relation between what Guillaumians call tongue and discourse. First I shall outline the problem by giving a number of examples, and then try to suggest one avenue which might be explored in the hopes of finding a solution.

We report a study that tests children’s knowledge of an effect of Principle C of the binding theory: In the adult grammar of English and French, coreference between a main clause object pronoun and a non-pronominal subject of a sentence-final temporal clause is permitted, whereas coreference between a subject pronoun and the subject of a temporal clause is blocked. In an act-out task, both French-speaking adults and children aged 3–7 were found to be sensitive to the position of a main clause pronoun (subject vs object) in selecting a referent for the subject of a temporal clause, permitting coreference more frequently when the pronoun was in object position. This result replicates earlier work done on English. A sentence judgement task produced clear results only for adults. Results from the act-out suggest that children are relatively inept at integrating non-mentioned participants into their interpretation of sentences. We suggest that children’s knowledge of the principle C effect we tested constitutes a “poverty of the stimulus” argument for innateness.

This study presents a partial analysis of nouns ending in orthographic -sion, -tion (or -ion) and morphophonemic variations between these nouns and related stems. It deals with an area traditionally called derivation.

The frame of reference is that of Trager and Smith, Outline of English Structure, supplemented by subsequent revisions and additions to the general theory developed by the authors in their teaching. For the purposes of this study the morphemic analysis will be limited to “postmorphemes,” i.e., morphemes occurring at the end of the word. Everything which precedes the postmorpheme(s) will be called the “stem” and will not be further segmented. The “stem” may occur elsewhere as an independent word (mutation: mutate) or in composition with different postmorpheme(s) (ambition: ambitious). The following special symbols will be used: √ … “morphemes”; √ … “allomorphs”; √ …/ “morphophonemes”; ∽ “varies with.” In three cases (Y, T, S) a small capital letter is used as a morphophonemic symbol; these are denned below.

Predication is widely considered to be a fundamental feature of human language and conceptual structure. This article offers a reassessment of the central role that predication plays within current theories of grammar, by calling into question the universality of predication and its nature as a primitive, irreducible notion. It proposes a new definition of predicate, as a complex emergent entity derived from the alignment of two independent elements of conceptual structure: thematic role assignment and headedness.

This report contains the results of a preliminary study dealing with the ways in which children between five and six years of age discriminate and learn phonetic elements of spoken language. In particular, it describes differences on a verbal discrimination learning task of stops vs fricatives in CVC syllables.

In the course of his discussion of the relative merits of transformational generative phonology (TGP) and natural generative phonology (NGP), Piggott (1980) introduces as evidence in favour of TGP two phonological changes that took place between Proto-Algonquian and Ojibwa in the following chronological order.: (1) final lax vowel deletion, and (2) the deletion of resulting word-final glides *-w and *-y. By change (1), Proto-Algonquian *elenyiw-a ‘man’ mutatis mutandis became *i/iniw, and by change (2), *iliniw became *i/ini, modern Algonquin dialect of Ojibwa anini. Much of Piggott’s argumentation in favour of TGP rests on certain types of exceptions to these historical processes. In the first type, a Proto-Algonquian form *ne-wi-nteko-wil ‘I am a Windigo [cannibal monster],’ and other verb forms of similar morphemic constituency, underwent final lax vowel deletion and became *ni-wīndigōw, but failed to undergo final glide deletion. This was because the final *-i, unlike the final *-a in *elenyiw-a, an inflectional suffix which does not occur anywhere in the paradigm of the modern word anini, was a derivational morpheme and part of the verb stem, and was retained in non-final position. There it stands in morphophonemic alternation with its own absence, as shown by forms such as ni-wīndigōwi-min < *ne-wi·nieko·wi-Hmena ‘we are Windigos.’ The underlying form of the singular verb is hence ni-wīndigōwi, and the fact that the surface word-final glide -w was not elided is adduced as evidence that the phonological change is better described in reference to the abstract, underlying form rather than the surface form. Since TGP can distinguish between underlying and surface word-final glides and NGP presumably cannot, Piggott claims that TGP can better characterize this change than can NGP.

This paper focuses on genitive interrogatives in Iraqi Arabic. I argue that these constructions are inherently D-linked (Discourse-Linked). Similarly to D-linked interrogatives, when genitive interrogatives appear in content questions in which both the resumptive strategy and the gap strategy are possible, the genitive interrogatives have a D-N structure when the gap strategy is employed and a D-φ-N structure when the resumptive strategy is employed. I then propose the following hypothesis: what defines D-linking is the presence of a domain restriction in the form of an overt noun.

What is a Canadian? Have we who call ourselves Canadians a distinctive culture, a distinctive way of life and thought? Or are we “American” or “British”? Or are we perhaps in the unhappy position of being nothing but reflections of two great, yet different, nations? These questions are exercising the minds of a great many people today, and not just within our own borders. To be sure, the historian and the geographer have their answers: the economist has his. And the ethnologist has yet another. But none of them are quite satisfactory. Perhaps the best answer will soon be provided by another scholar—the linguist. And his will embrace those of other scholars and be better than theirs because it will be based on better evidence.