This article engages questions about translation, phonological iconicity, and seductive ideophony. I begin by discussing the work of Paul Friedrich as it relates to questions of linguistic relativity and poetics and the qualities of music and myth that constitute poetry. I then present a poem written in Navajo by Rex Lee Jim and four translations of the poem. Three are from Navajo consultants and one of those translations will be, from a certain perspective, rather surprising. Namely, why does one consultant translate this poem as if it is composed of ideophones? The fourth translation is mine. I then work through the morphology of the poem in Navajo, saying something more about the translators and the process of translation. I then provide a transcript of a conversation I had with Blackhorse Mitchell about this poem. I use this to take up questions of phonological iconicity (punning) and the seductive quality of ideophony (the pole of music). I also place this poem within a context of the stick game in Navajo philosophy (the pole of myth). This leads, in the conclusion, to reflections about linguistic relativity, misunderstandings, sound, and poetics.

Studies of word-order universals have had great impact in modern linguistics, thanks to Greenberg’s (1963) work and to Hawkins’s (1983) refinements. Greenberg’s conclusions were based on a sample of 30 languages “for more detailed information” and 142 languages “for certain limited cooccurrences of basic word order” (Hawkins 1983:xi; cf. Greenberg 1963:74–75). Hawkins expanded the 142 “to some 350 languages”, and for “between one-third and one-half of these supplementary data have been collected of the type that Greenberg listed in his 30-language sample” (Hawkins 1983:xi-xii). Hawkins proposed extensive revisions in Greenberg’s universals based on this expanded sample.

Il est plus éeconomique et naturel de rendre compte de certaines régles phonologiques lorsque nous analysons les contextes dans lesquels elles s’appliquent en tenant compte de la structure syllabique. La première théorie qui a été élaborée sur cette base, dans le cadre génératif, est celle de Kahn (1976). Par la suite, d’autres ont suivi. Celle que je retiendrai pour nos fins est la théorie de Liberman et Prince (1977). C’est en me servant de leurs théories que je vais démontrer, dans la deuxième partie de cet article, certains avantages que comporte une telle analyse, L’analyse en structure syllabique fait très bien ressortir le rôle de l’accent dans la formation des syllabes. Je crois que la structure de ces dernières doit être prise en considération pour rendre compte d’une règle comme celle que l’on a baptisé “Canadian Raising.” Les principales données qui furent utilisées pour la formulation de la règle de Canadian Raising ont été rapportées, il y a plus de 35 ans, par Joos (1942). Chambers (1973) a repris la question et nous offre une réanalyse dans le cadre de la théorie de Chomsky et Halle (1968; voir aussi King 1972, Picard 1977). C’est la formulation de la règle de Canadian Raising que Chambers a présentée que je vais réviser dans la deuxième partie de l’article. La première partie servira à la présentation de cette règle.

Ideally, the grammar of a language should tell us whkh sequences of words form sentences and which sequences don’t. It is doubtful whether any existing grammar achieves this end for one of the natural languages, such as English, Russian or Chinese. However, logicians have constructed certain artificial languages (e. g. the prepositional calculus) together with a set of rules which distinguish between sentences (or well-formed formulas, as logicians prefer to call them) and non-sentences. While it is premature to attempt a complete description of English, partial grammars have been constructed.

In this paper we shall consider a fragment of English containing the names John and Jane, the verbs must, work, call, have, be, the adverb today, the conjunctions but and while and a few other words of the same types. We also admit inflected forms such as works, worked, working, etc. We shall attempt to-decide which sequences of these word-forms are sentences and which are not. Our grammar, if successful, must tell us that “John must have been calling Jane today” is a sentence, and that “John has must call Jane” is not a sentence. However, we may as well admit that many sentences will escape our net, owing to the fact that certain constructions, e. g. the gerund, will not be considered here.

This study examines the acquisition of a familiar and widely studied syntactic phenomenon, preposition stranding, within the framework of transformational generative grammar. According to Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar (UG), children begin the acquisition task with an innate knowledge of universal principles of grammar. Many of these principles have open parameters with marked and unmarked options which must be set by children on the basis of their linguistic input. The marked setting entails the unmarked setting in that if a language allows the marked structures it will also allow the relevant unmarked structures, but the reverse is not necessarily true.

The aim of this article is to provide an analysis of two types of Spanish infinitival constructions headed by a determiner. In an attempt to define the categorial status of the infinitive morpheme, it is proposed that there are two homophonous infinitival morphemes which project two different structures: one of them is inflectional in nature and projects clausal configurations; the other one is derivational in nature and projects nominal structures. This latter suffix carries an activity aspect and attaches only to aspectually compatible verbal stems. This proposal explains the different properties and contexts for the two structures analysed, and, more interestingly, provides an account for a number of data that remained unexplained in previous analyses.

In this paper, we provide new evidence for the hypothesis that in some languages, differential object marking (DOM) may have evolved from marking of the information structural category of topicality. While Iemmolo (2010) suggested that topic left-dislocation might have facilitated the evolution of DOM, and Dalrymple and Nikolaeva (2011) argued for systematic marking of secondary topics as the source of DOM, we suggest a third possible grammaticalization source within the topical domain: the prepositional marking of embedded topics. In particular, we show that the Romanian DO (Direct Object) marker pe had a function as marker of embedded topics in Old Romanian. Moreover, we show how DOM in Old Romanian may additionally have been facilitated by the re-analysis of embedded topics as themes in certain constructions.

This article consists of a generative analysis of the variable surface ordering of demonstratives in Michif, a mixed language historically derived from French and Cree, and spoken by some Métis. It is claimed that all demonstratives in Michif originate in [Spec, DemP] and raise to [Spec, DP]. Prenominal demonstratives occur when the head of the movement chain is pronounced, while postnominal demonstratives are the result of two factors: first, the pronunciation of the tail rather than the head of the demonstrative’s movement chain, and second, the noun undergoing a last resort p-movement, adjoining to DemP. The different patterning is motivated via meaning differences in the corresponding patterns, appealing to the differences in the featural makeup of demonstratives. Pragmatic information, said here to be a contrastive focus feature, is posited on some demonstratives while not on others, yielding the different ordering and also a different interpretation. The variable nature of demonstratives cross-linguistically is also discussed.

In the first article of this series I pointed out the great similarity between the speech habits of Ontarioans and those of their American neighbours across the line: both speak a variety of North American English. This state of affairs should not be surprising in view of the early settlement history of the borderlands and of subsequent cultural and social contact along the border.

There are, nevertheless, many linguistic features not shared by speakers of English on both sides of the border. In terms of vocabularly I have already illustrated a number of such differences, indicating that, in the main, they probably result from the generalization in Ontario of words current in British English—the speech of thousands of immigrants who have come to Canada during the past century or so.

This article is centred on the concept of the deictic feature embedded in demonstratives. A principled taxonomy of deictic features attested cross-linguistically is proposed, with the aim of being as comprehensive as possible. The list of deictic features previously identified is greatly expanded to include 15 features, with which 52 deictic values are associated. The morphological strategies for encoding deictic features in demonstratives are also examined. Three techniques are identified: (i) isolating; (ii) agglutinative or serial; and (iii) inflectional encoding. A number of the deictic features discussed in this article, along with their morphological realization strategies, are illustrated with data from the Miao Group of languages, spoken in the People’s Republic of China.

Les tours prépositionnels jouent le même rôle que les cas: ils expriment des relations. Jusqu’ici tout le monde est d’accord; les divergences commencent quand on veut préciser la nature de ces relations. Pour des linguistes comme R. Jakobson, B. Pottier et J. R. Gallup (ces derniers suivant une tradition guillaumienne), pour le Hjelmslev de La Catégorie des cas, pour un latiniste comme Perret, elles sont sémantiques; pour la philologie traditionnelle et pour des linguistes comme J. Kuryłowicz, E. Benvéniste, R. H. Robins, J. Perrot et des tenants de la grammaire générative comme N. Ruwet, elles sont parfois uniquement syntaxiques. Cette dernière perspective s’attache à rendre compte du « fonctionnement des éléments de langue » et, comme l’étude fonctionnelle du latin et surtout du grec a été négligée par la philologie traditionnelle presque uniquement occupée de diachronie, c’est cette perspective que nous adopterons, en nous en tenant au latin classique d’une part, à l’attique d’autre part, états (approximatifs) de langue assez semblables en ce qui concerne le problème qui nous occupe.

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.

We compare the use and function of two discourse particles that show many similarities: Canadian English eh and Canadian French hein. Surveys of anglophone students at the University of Toronto and francophone students at Université Laval reveal that these particles have similar discourse functions and that there are many parallels in their patterns of use. However, francophone students report a higher use of hein than do anglophone students of eh. Moreover, francophones have more positive attitudes towards constructions with hein than do their anglophone counterparts with respect to eh. In addition, eh—used both less often and valued less positively—has taken on additional functions as an identity marker: it is used to identify speakers of Canadian English and, in print, to evoke Canadian solidarity. In contrast, hein does not have an identity marking function. We propose that the development of an identity marking function for eh—and the lack of such a function for hein—reflects differences in how linguistic identities are constructed in English and French Canada.

In his study of consonant epenthesis, Wetzels (1985:285-286) recognizes the existence of two distinct types: “one type involves the appearance of an epenthetic consonant inside liquid-final clusters; the second type concerns intrusive stops which originate inside sequences of consonants which do not have liquids as their second member.” Following are some characteristic examples:

In phonology, constraints are finally coming into their own. There is no real consensus, however, about how constraints behave, and specifically how they interact with other aspects of the phonology and with each other. Theories of Declarative Phonology (DP) approach this “Interaction Problem” (Scobbie 1991a) in a radical way. In DP everything is a constraint — generalizations and lexical entries alike constrain the form of the intended phonological representation (“surface structure”). Moreover, constraints are mutually compatible, indefeasible and are declared non-procedurally. Declarative Phonology is therefore an extremely simple and restrictive type of constraint-based phonology, eschewing constraint conflict, violation and destructive repair. For details of various declarative theories as well as phonological and computational motivation for the declarative paradigm, see Scobbie (1991a) and the other papers in that volume, Bird et al (1993), Bird (1990), Broe (1993), Coleman (1992), Russell (1992), Scobbie (1991b) and Wheeler (1988).

Berlin and Kay (1969) present strong evidence that “all languages share a universal system of basic colour categorization” and that “the basic color-term inventories of most languages expand through time by lexicalizing these categories in a highly constrained, universal order” (Kay and McDaniel 1978:610). The validity of these conclusions has also been demonstrated by Collier et al. (1976) and by Kay and McDaniel (1978). The evolutionary process identified by Berlin and Kay can be represented schematically as follows:

where the arrow may be read ‘is encoded before’ (Kay and McDaniel 1978: 615). In other words, languages proceed through a series of stages in the development of their basic colour-term lexicon, with the most simplistic system containing only terms for white (light) and black (dark). Any expansion of this fundamental system will first result in the addition of a term for red and then in the addition of a term for green or yellow. If further expansion takes place, “yellow or green, whichever did not emerge at the previous stage, now emerges” (Berlin and Kay 1969:18), followed by terms for blue and brown. When a system develops beyond Stage VI, “there is a rapid expansion to the full roster of eleven basic color categories,” although no particular order of appearance among terms for purple, pink, orange, or gray has been ascertained (Berlin and Kay 1969:21-22).

Canadian Raising—the phonetic changes in vowel quality and quantity in the diphthongs /ai/ and/ au/ before voiceless consonants—has been of considerable importance to phonological theories ever since Joos (1975). The opaque interaction of Canadian Raising and flapping in words such as writer consitutes one of the main arguments for rule ordering in phonology (Chomsky and Halle 1968; Chambers 1975). Recently, Mielke, Armstrong, and Hume (2003) have challenged Joos’s phonemic splitting analysis and have argued that Canadian Raising, rather than being a productive phonological process, is a static lexicalized generalization implemented as a choice between allomorphic variants. A rebuttal to this allomorphic analysis is offered based on evidence that, for some speakers, Canadian Raising productively applies in novel morphological contexts, in language games, and in the phrasal phonology, none of which are amenable to an allomorphic analysis.

A socially stratified sample—the Toronto English Corpus—together with the construct of apparent time (with speakers aged 10–90 years) reveal that certain features are declining, including future will, deontic have got to, possessive have got, intensifier very, and the sentence tag you know. On the other hand, some features are on the rise, including future going to, deontic have to, possessive have, intensifiers really and so, and sentences tags such as whatever, so, and stuff like that. The younger generation is pushing these changes forward more rapidly. While some developments date back hundreds of years in the history of English, they are not particular to Canada, and are consistent with research on other English corpora. Other changes appear to be progressing in a unique way in Canada, including deontic and possessive have. I argue that the broader socio-historical context is a critical factor: geographic and economic mobility as well as changes in communication technology may explain the rapid acceleration of certain types of linguistic change.

This article presents an analysis of a Montreal French corpus of text messages and considers the link between text messaging, and both spoken and written language. This corpus is part of a larger corpus of text messages sent by mobile phone (Texto4-Science). Our study focuses on two morphosyntactic variables for which an important sociostylistic variation has been reported in Montreal French: the alternation between the strong pronouns nous/nous autres ‘we/us’ (as non clitics), and between the subject clitics on/nous ‘we’. Their comparison in the text messages corpus and in spoken corpora shows that while text messages tend to approximate spoken language, they are not a perfect reflection of it. Generally, the hybridity of text messages can be conceived in the following manner: text messages obey a double standard (spoken and orthographic) and allow for occasional transgressions (formal markers associated with the written language and nonstandard spelling reflecting the spoken language).