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

0.1 Of the various peoples of continental European origin to be found in the Province of Saskatchewan, the Germans form perhaps the largest group. Found in almost every part of the province, they are actually in the majority in many parts of western and central Saskatchewan where German continues to play an effective role as a medium of communication. This is particularly true of such localities as Macklin, Leader, Tramping Lake and Luseland where large groups of Russo-Germans settled after World War I. The importance, too, of the agricultural character of these communities cannot be overemphasized. Stable, with very little shift in population, children grow up to take over from their parents or to settle on neighboring farms, often vacated by non-Germans.

Adequate plans for the examination of the language and place-names of the Island were conceived only three years ago; it will not, therefore, be surprising if this interim report is a more or less inadequate sketch which may at times dwell more on what needs to be done rather than on what has actually been accomplished.

Some of the difficulties we are having to take into account result from the fact that toponymy and linguistic research are not altogether autonomous disciplines. Properly viewed they impinge on such studies as cartography, geography, history, social anthropology and folklore. One of the most encouraging recent developments in Newfoundland has been the lively interest in the inheritance of the Island, and the formulation of a programme of research for its adequate exploration.

1. Une prononciation tout à fait singulière et maintes fois entendue dans le milieu étudiant au collège classique de l'Assomption, ville située à quelque 25 milles au nord de Montréal, nous fournit l'occasion d'analyser expérimentalement sa structure et d'établir ses principales caractéristiques.

Tous les gens de cette agglomération dont le parler est le français emploient, à quelques exceptions près, la fricative palato-alvéolaire /ž/ de façon distincte et constante. Cependant, l'observateur quelque peu exercé entendra chez certains individus toute une gamme de variantes du phonème mentionné. Dans des mots comme agi, japper, à jeun, la fricative sonore peut se realiser comme [H], soit [aHi], [Hape], [aHœ], ces réalisations variant également, pour un même individu, selon le contexte phonétique ou suivant des variations individuelles : [aHi], [ahi], [axi].

Cage et cageux sont deux termes forestiers ne figurant dans aucun dictionnaire français et qui ont déjà intrigué plusieurs dialectologues canadiens. Les uns les ont considered comme mots “du cru”, les autres comme mots à bannir de notre vocabulaire.

Le fichier de la Société du Parler français au Canada nous servira à faire l'histoire de ces mots. Ce fichier possède déjà une cinquantaine de fiches sur cage, cageux ainsi que sur leurs dérivés ou concurrents.

Ces deux mots remontent beaucoup plus loin qu'on ne le croit généralement. C'est au 17e siècle qu'ils apparaissent pour la premiére fois et l'emploi qu'on en fait laisse supposer qu'ils sont connus depuis longtemps. Dans les comptes du Séminaire de Québec le 20 avril 1693, on paye à Antoine Buisson 4 livres “pour la cage de son cajeu” et le même jour, on paye à la même personne 12 livres pour 16 cordes de bois rendues à la basse-ville.

1. In the studies of Canadian English which have appeared up to date, emphasis has largely been placed been on the social-historical factors which account for the distribution of different groups of English-speaking settlers. This work, of course, provides an indispensable basis for further linguistic investigations, and equally useful are the lexical distributions that have been studied. In the phonological field, however, there is an urgent need for more material based on first-hand phonetic observation.

2. The present article sets out to analyse phonetically the English spoken in the Vancouver area, specifically among the younger generation. Some fifty local students, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-two, have co-operated in this exploratory analysis during the last two years, and the detailed investigation of their speech has been supplemented and checked by further investigation outside the group.

The Canadian Summer Institute of Linguistics is a training school offering an introductory course in descriptive, structural linguistics. The curriculum includes phonetics, phonemics, morphology, syntax, and a series of lectures on related field problems. Each of the five divisions is given the equivalent of 55 classroom hours, an hour a day, five days a week, over an 11 week period.

The overall aim is to prepare the student for field work, especially in areas where no, or very little, linguistic work has been done. For this reason the emphasis in phonetics is on hearing, reproduction, and transcription. This is done in small drill groups with each student receiving as much individual help as possible. Sections are usually limited to eight students per instructor. The instructors take the students through the range of possibilities of speech sounds, explaining with diagrams and demonstrations the manner in which such sounds are made.

The purpose of this paper is to describe in detail allophonic variation in Cree vowels so as to exhibit certain correlations between quality and quantity. The phonemically short vowels have considerable allophonic variation and this paper will be concerned to a large degree with their description. The pertinent conditioning factors will be stated in terms of (a) particular consonants preceding or following the vowel sounds in questions, and (b) the position of the vowel in the phonological word — a rhythm-stress unit bounded by potential pause.

Afin de clarifier les explications et pour poser le probléme dans son contexte, voici tout d'abord une reproduction du Questionnaire, dont les éléments ont été distingués en sous-groupes, et numérotés. La liste se subdivise en A, “mots séparés” et B, “mots dans une phrase”.

1. 1. In the last issue of the JCLA (March 1957) I made a tentative phonetic analysis of the English spoken by the younger generation in the Vancouver area. On the basis of that analysis I propose in this article to go on to the examination of one of the problems that face us in the phonemic classification of the Vancouver vowels.

2. 2. I should like to stress from the beginning that this problem is distributional, for whatever our views on the nature of the phoneme — whether we regard it as a concrete, practical unit, useful in the description of languages and dialects known or hitherto unknown, or whether we consider it as an abstract Platonic idea whose translation to the real world involves a series of Protean adaptations or adjustments to the phonological environment — in either case, the most important factor to be considered is distribution.