For the sake of argument, the extreme view is taken that the identification of phonological entities on the basis of articulatory or acoustic features is not in keeping with the strict structural linguistic tenet that only information from language itself be employed in determining the units used in linguistic description. The attempt is then made to show how the morphophonemes of Finnish are distinct from each other on the basis of their distribution within the word. The notions employed in the analysis are taken only from within language; i.e. no reference is made to nature or to the human body. The weaknesses of this approach are also pointed out.

Rules of stress like those described by Chomsky & Halle 1968 are examined for their relevance in determining metricality (using Halle & Keyser's [1966] stress maximum concept) over the period of modern English. The Nuclear Stress Rule frequently locates stress maxima in unmetrical positions, and the Compound Rule occasionally does. A late, optional rule is proposed—the Stress Exchange Rule—which reverses unmetrical alignments resulting from earlier rules. An Alternating Stress Rule is also proposed, to account for non-lexical stress. Thus stress maxima are created in different ways. The possible rule combinations (lexical, phrasal; obligatory, optional) discriminate degrees of metricality, and provide stylistic parameters.

The word aller has called forth a great variety of etymological explanations, none of which is completely satisfactory to the linguistic scholar. However, I make bold to offer a fresh contribution to the problem, in the hope that it will fulfill all three requirements of a good etymon, phonological, historical, and semantic.

The well-known hypothesis, that aller comes from the rapid giving of military commands, ambulemus, *amlemus, *allemus, offers serious phonological difficulties. Not only does ambulare give embler regularly in Old French, but, in addition, both ambulare and alare appear in the Reichenau Glosses. Furthermore, it is not necessary to seek a common etymon for the verb 'to go' in Romance, since the very confusion of forms existing in the conjugation of this verb in all the Romance tongues is enough warrant for positing a separate origin for the Northern French aller.

Despite all that has been written on the subject, it is still an open question whether the prevailing types of strong preterites of class VII in NGmc. and WGmc., as Ole. hét, hlióp, helt, fekk, lét, blét, etc., have a common origin with Gothic reduplicated preterites of the types haíháit, áiáuk, haíhald, faífāh, lailōt, haíhōp, etc., or descend from IE unreduplicated formations, in particular lengthened-grade aorists. In recent decades this problem has come to be involved with another one, namely the origin of the pt. pl. stem in classes I-V of the strong verb, above all in classes IV and V for Germanic as a whole, and probably most scholars who accept unreduplicated formations as the source of the forms in the category first mentioned do so for the forms in the latter categories also. It is not proposed in this paper to restate the arguments that have been put forward in support of this view,1 or in refutation thereof,2 but rather, tentatively assuming its general correctness, to reconstruct in chronological order the various developments which the theory seems to require if it is to be brought into detailed correspondence with the known NGmc. and WGmc. forms which it purports generally to explain.

In historical English grammar it is regularly assumed that Gmc. initial [f s þ] became voiced before voiced sounds in southern England at some time in the Old or early Middle English period. For the present purpose, Wright's description of the change is sufficiently representative: ‘The initial voiceless spirants f, s, þ became the voiced spirants v, z, ð in late OE. or early ME. in Kentish and the southern, especially the south-western dialects, as vader, vat, vlesch, vrend; zaule zǫule, zinne zenne zünne “sin”, ðat ðet, ðing. The modern dialects show that this voicing of the initial voiceless spirants must have taken place at an early period, because it is almost exclusively confined to native words, hence the change must have taken place before the great influx of Anglo-Norman words into these dialects. The use of the initial voiced for the voiceless spirants is now obsolete in Ken., Sur., Sus., and obsolescent in s. Pem., Hamp., and the I.W., but it is still in general use in east Hrf., parts of Glo., west Brks., Wil., Som., and Dev.‘