The Canadian Journal of Linguistics was established in 1954, and in October of that year Volume 1, Number 1 appeared. At that time it was known as The Journal of the Canadian Linguistic Association; its current name dates back to 1961. In 1980, a 25th anniversary commemorative publication was produced; the current volume commemorates the journal’s 50th anniversary. In the following pages, we present a selection of the journal’s covers throughout its history.

As an alternative to the high-low-front-back model of vowel specification, the laryngeal articulator model is proposed, based on a reinterpretation of how the vocal tract functions to produce laryngeal and pharyngeal sounds. Evidence drawn from numerous laryngoscopic studies demonstrates the scope of articulatory behaviours possible in the pharynx. For a broad sample of languages, lingual retraction is shown to accompany laryngeal/pharyngeal gestures, motivating the redistribution of vowel quality designations. The vocal tract is divided into two articulatory components: the laryngeal articulator and the oral articulator. The vowel chart is split into three sectors: front, raised, and retracted. Whereas front vowels can be qualified as close or open, so-called back vowels are re-designated as either raised or retracted, and the role of retraction as a function of the laryngeal constrictor mechanism is elaborated.

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 article shows how affixal scope and precedence relations fall out in a natural way from properties of the computational system. Using Asymmetry Theory (Di Sciullo 2005), it is proposed that: (i) roots and affixes form minimal trees; (ii) minimal trees compose with each other to form morphological phases; (iii) features of a morphological phase edge that are legible at Phonetic Form (PF) determine affix-root linearization; and (iv) ordering of affixes relative to each other follows the Hierarchy of Homogeneous Projections, which constrains scope relations at Logical Form (LF). Three languages are considered: English (which has prefixing and suffixing), Yekhee (strongly prefixal), and Turkish (strongly suffixal). The findings presented here support a parallel model of grammar: morphological derivations (DM) parallel syntactic derivations (DS), with restricted interactions between them.

In linguistics, explanation is based on whatever initial conditions are imposed on language, and so it necessarily functions within the range of options allowed by the laws of nature. Thus, since syntax is a computational system, it is subject to principles of efficient computation. Moreover, the Faculty of Language is located in human beings, so this means that it is constrained by the conceptual and perceptual systems of human beings. In this context, three topics are presented that have been repeatedly discussed over the last 50 years: inversion in interrogatives, long-distance dependencies, and recursion. For these cases, the computational approach favoured by Generative Grammar leads one to inscribe lists of unexplained elements in Universal Grammar. This is but a measure of our ignorance. On the other hand, a fully biolinguistic approach that takes into account the conceptual and perceptual basis of language opens a way to a true explanation.

Linguistic anthropology can be understood as attention to the use and communicative context of language across cultures and societies. The legacy of linguistic anthropology for both of its constituent disciplines resides in qualitative research methods and the attention paid to the particular words of particular speakers. Linguistic anthropologists have also modelled ethical ways of doing collaborative research. Canadian linguistic anthropology has been pragmatic and closely tied to the maintenance and revitalization of First Nations (Native Canadian) languages. Issues of language are inseparable from those of community and larger social processes: this can be seen in the context of traditional Algonquian languages in the Prairies as well as in the adaptation of English to First Nations purposes. The latter is a reaction to the imposition of residential schooling that alienated students from their culture, their community, and their language, and escalated language loss. Current research on life-history narratives indicates that nomadic legacies of subsistence hunting are still present in the decision-making strategies of contemporary Algonquian peoples in southern Ontario.

This article examines the origins of Canadian French, focusing on it morphosyntax. This approach compares written sources, both literary and non-literary, for the 19th century, to oral sources, for the middle and end of the 20th century. While it is still possible to use oral sources from the 20th century as a baseline for written sources from the end of the 19th century, this approach is more problematic for earlier centuries. The negative adverbs pas et point are examined on the basis of a corpus of old Canadian French, and it is shown that the progression of pas with respect to point was more rapid in the context of verbal negation than in the context of argument negation in France, in New France, and in Canada. During the 18th century, even though the progression of pas, as compared to point, is parallel in France and in New France, it is nevertheless the case that certain regions of France that served as sources of immigration to Canada as well as certain social groups in New France use point more frequently. The 19th century sees a progression and a uniformization of the variant pas across all social classes in Quebec. In Ontario, the variant point was conserved until a later date in its southern border region.

The discovery that some processes are primitive rather than learned provides a window into the properties of the language faculty. One of the postulated modules of the language faculty is sociolinguistic competence, the ability to use language appropriately in its socio-cultural nexus. I present three cases where variable phenomena exhibit regularities that appear to be essential rather than accidental. First is the Ethan Experience, which inures children engaged in acquiring the community accent from learning foreign features that must later be unlearned. The experience entails an innate accent-filter, and its influence has been observed in all situations in which the accent being acquired differs from the home accent. Second is Sex-Based Variability, whereby women use fewer non-standard variants and have wider stylistic repertoires than men of the same social class in the same settings. Third is Vernacular Roots, the discovery that a number of sociolinguistic variables recur in English vernaculars wherever they have been studied, as well as in interlanguage, Creoles, and child language. The ubiquity of these features presumably reflects their privileged status in the language faculty.

The prospects of a cognitive neuroscience of syntax are considered with respect to functional neuroanatomy of two seemingly independent systems: Working Memory and syntactic representation and processing. It is proposed that these two systems are more closely related than previously supposed. In particular, it is claimed that a sentence with anaphoric dependencies involves several Working Memories, each entrusted with a different linguistic function. Components of Working Memory reside in the Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus, which is associated with Broca’s region. When lesioned, this area manifests comprehension disruptions in the ability to analyze intra-sentential dependencies, suggesting that Working Memory spans over syntactic computations. The unification of considerations regarding Working Memory with a purely syntactic approach to Broca’s regions leads to the conclusion that mechanisms that compute transformations—and no other syntactic relations—reside in this area.

Compound words allow us to investigate lexical storage, retrieval, and interpretation. The role of storage and computation in compound processing is reviewed. It is claimed that morphological processing is automatic and obligatory, and that multi-morphemic words require resolution of a conflict between whole-word and constituent activation. This leads to the conclusion that morphological constituents are created through morphological processing so that strawberry comes to be composed of straw- and -berry; these constituents are positionally bound so that berry-, -berry, and berry are distinct processing units. This proliferation of morphological representations resolves long-standing puzzles concerning semantic transparency and challenges traditional psycholinguistic approaches that investigate the effect of some independent variable (such as semantic transparency) on task performance as a dependent variable. It is suggested that psycholinguistic inquiry may be understood as the study of the correlation of dependent variables within the language processing system.

This article presents research showing that second language (L2) learners do not have deficient representations and they are capable of acquiring structures that are absent from their first language (L1). The Redeployment Hypothesis—which claims that L2 phonologies include novel representations created via redeployment of L1 phonological components—is consistent with data from several domains, including acquisition of phonological features, syllable structure, moraic structure, and metrical structure. Moreover, it is shown that input prominence plays a role in L2 acquisition, and that language learners are sensitive to robust phonetic cues. Finally, studies done on interlingual homographs and homophones argue for non-selective access to the bilingual lexicon, suggesting that the language processing capacity is always engaged.