[The possibility of error arising from the treatment of phonetic sames within a paradigm as semantic sames is illustrated from languages (German, Irish, French) in which the forms can be traced historically. It must be at least equally as great in dealing with the IE reconstructed paradigms.]

Recent work in generative grammar has demonstrated the relationship between surface structure constraints and transformational rules. In some cases, various unrelated rules have been found to interact, and, in so doing, to satisfy a given constraint, characterized as a target.

Evidence is presented that Vallader, a Romantsch dialect, has a phonological target, realized by a number of rules, some peculiar to that dialect. In addition, Vallader shares a syntactic deletion rule with the other Romantsch dialects. In order to satisfy both of these conditions at once, Vallader has resorted to paradigmatic borrowing for one form of the present indicative.

[The High German shift of West Germanic initial [k-], currently defined as a shift to an affricate, can be defined in the phoneme system of the dialects only as a shift to a combination of stop plus related spirant [kx-, kh-, gh-]. This definition enables us to apply an exact criterion to some of the dialects. The shift of [k-] covers a larger territory than appears under the current formulation: it covers all the Upper German (Apfel) dialects and in the west extends beyond them.]

[It has frequently been suggested that a rise in cord tone is accompanied by changes in the position of the superglottal organs of speech, but the nature and extent of these modifications have not been systematically studied. This paper presents the results of an X-ray investigation of the changes which take place in the articulation of a vowel when it is pronounced first on a low pitch and then on a high pitch.]

An alternation of shwa with zero which is characteristic of a wide variety of morphemes is shown to support a generative phonological treatment of Hindi-Urdu in which aspirated consonants are analysed as units, while nasalized vowels are derived from underlying sequences of vowel plus nasal consonant. Some observations concerning the distribution of nasal segments at the level of systematic phonetics provide the basis for rules by which the five nasal consonants [m n ṇ ɲ ŋ] can be derived from underlying representations in which only two nasal segments are distinguished.

The expression ‘nuclear structures’ has become, in our day, a term to conjure with; but the concept is not new in linguistics. It is mentioned or implied in contemporary discussions under the terms ‘immediate constituents’, ‘rank’, and ‘endocentric phrases’; in the older literature it is referred to as ‘modification’, ‘attribution’, or ‘subordination’. An assumption of different ranks is implicit in such word-pairs as stem-affix, head–attribute, noun-adjective, substantive–modifier, verb–adverb, principal-subordinate.