Many pairs of words traditionally treated as crosslinguistic equivalents do not share the same set of senses, and dominant theories fail to account for this asymmetry. This article proposes an explanation for the crosslinguistic variation of polysemy based on two key insights from Bouchard's Sign Theory of Language. First, multifunctional words have only a single, abstract meaning, and second, properties of the linguistic sign follow from properties of the external systems with which language interfaces. The article describes the content of the English and French deictic verbs go, aller, come, and venir, showing that each possesses a simple semantic representation composed of primitives from general cognition. It then examines several specific semantic uses of go and aller, showing that differences in the surface polysemy of these verbs follow directly from a single difference in their abstract lexical meaning and the way the latter interacts with context, extralinguistic knowledge and grammar.

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.

Experimental research has shown that English-learning children as young as 19 months, as well as children learning other languages (e.g., Mandarin), infer some aspects of verb meanings by mapping the nominal elements in the utterance onto participants in the event expressed by the verb. The present study assessed this structure or analogical mapping mechanism (SAMM) on naturalistic speech in the linguistic environment of 20 Spanish-learning infants from Argentina (average age 19 months). This study showed that the SAMM performs poorly – at chance level – especially when only noun phrases (NPs) included in experimental studies of the SAMM were parsed. If agreement morphology is considered, the performance is slightly above chance but still very poor. In addition, it was found that the SAMM performs better on intransitive and transitive verbs, compared to ditransitives. Agreement morphology has a beneficial effect only on transitive and ditransitive verbs. On the whole, concerns are raised about the role of the SAMM in infants’ interpretation of verb meaning in natural exchanges.

Theoretical accounts of Greek compounds argue for a close relation between their stress properties and their underlying structure. Compounds that preserve and receive stress at the same position as their second constituent are analyzed as stem-word constructions, while those that receive antepenultimate stress are viewed as belonging to the stem-stem category. Using an auditory lexical decision task, we examine the effect of stress change on the processing of compounds in the light of existing theoretical linguistic accounts. Although our experimental results do not reach statistical significance, we believe that they are informative of the cognitive status and role of stress in compound processing. Finally, they relate to existing theories of compounding in Greek and reflect the complex interaction of the psycholinguistic effects of stress and the structural properties of these constructions.

The title of this paper should by no means be interpreted as a recommendation diplomatically couched in the form of a question. As I write it, I am wondering whether or not we could achieve more clarity in our exchanges among linguists if we decided to judge on its own merits each one of the cases where we are used to operating, or tempted to operate, with the notion of subject, and if we tried to devise new and less ambiguous labelings for every specific complex of syntactic criteria. Yet, considering the difficulty of reaching agreement among all scholars concerned, would we not, thereby, increase the existing confusion rather than reduce it?

Having decided to lend a hand with the Dictionary of Canadian English, one’s first thought will be to read various items of Canadiana for the purpose of excerpting quotations. In his initial burst of enthusiasm, the volunteer is likely to tackle something on the order of the Publications of the Hudson’s Bay Record Society, Cartwright’s Labrador Journal (1792), Pennant’s Arctic Zoology, Isham’s Observations on Hudson’s Bay (1743), Palliser’s Journals (1863), or files of such pioneer newspapers as the Loyalist (York), Qu’Appelle Vidette, or Bob Edwards’s Calgary Eye Opener. While works like these are ideal sources of citations for the dictionary we envisage their every importance renders them unwise choices for the neophyte. It is not enough to select works of historical value, for mere mechanical examination of the most promising sources cannot be expected to yield optimum results in the absence of a thorough knowledge of the field of inquiry. Not only is there the risk that the unskilled researcher will fail to notice some unfamillar words, illustrative of the life and thoughts of earlier periods, but he may also miss a few common ones. Then, too, he may waste time in collecting irrelevant material. Since the earlier examples of more settled words are ordinarily hardest to locate and, of course more prized, the consequences of an inexperienced researcher overlooking, say, an 1856 example of Confederation (for it was used anticipatively well before 1867) are rather more serious than would be the skipping of more recent words. The products of a disciplined understanding are superior to those of an uncultivated understanding, so it is to our helpers’ advantage to learn as much as possible of the basic principles of lexical research before delving into scarcer source materials.

To explain why English compounds generally avoid internal inflectional suffixation (e.g., key-chain rather than keys-chain), linguists have often invoked the Level Ordering Hypothesis, that is, that particular types of morphology, in this case inflectional suffixation, are derivationally ordered after compounding. However, a broad range of counter-examples and conceptual objections to Level Ordering have emerged. We propose an alternative account, based on the observation that certain English inflectional suffixes are more perceptible than others (-ing > -s > -ed), and that these suffixes are less crucial to lexical access and recovery of meaning than corresponding root-final segments. This proposal was tested in perception and production experiments. In the perception experiment, compounds with a nonsense word as modifier (e.g., dacks van, dacked van) were auditorily presented to native English speakers, who were asked to spell what they heard. The participants omitted significantly more -ed than -s or -ing. In the production experiment, native English speakers read these compounds. The speakers dropped significantly more -ed than -s or -ing. Furthermore, they dropped more of these sounds when they were spelled as affixes than as part of the root (e.g., dacked van vs. dact van). These results suggest that English speakers’ avoidance or inclusion of inflection in compounds is based not on Level Ordering but on perceptibility, as well as the status of the consonant as an affix. We further present a formal analysis capturing these factors in terms of Steriade’s Licensing-by-Cue proposal.

In linguistics as in any other field of learning, a scholar may concentrate on the particular aspect of study that most appeals to his temperament. One may choose to analyse and classify the structural phenomena which are found in all varieties of human speech; another may seek to determine the relationships which exist between languages known to be or suspected of being related; a third may follow the history of one particular language, tracing its development from the earliest records to the present; a fourth may concern himself with the many differences which exist contemporaneously among the speakers of one language. The different varieties of speech to be found in any language are called dialects, and the person who studies them is called a linguistic geographer

The following is an account of glottalization and gemination in the traditional vernacular of the Greater Bolton area. Bolton is a town situated 12 miles north-west of Manchester in northwestern England. The Greater Bolton area consists of the county borough of Bolton, Farnworth municipal borough, and the urban districts of Horwich, Turton, Little Lever and Kearsley. Its population is approximately 230,000.

From a consideration of various historical, industrial, economic, social and administrative factors, the Greater Bolton area can be shown to be a relatively homogeneous cultural unit within the urban field of influence of Bolton. This cultural homogeneity is reflected in the speech of the area, which is also relatively homogeneous in character, and distinctive when compared to the speech of other parts of Greater Manchester County, South Lancashire and Merseyside (cf. Shorrocks 1980:1–27).