In recent years linguists have looked to linguistic change for empirical support for various proposed constraints on the form of grammars. This orientation of diachronic studies is reflected, for example, in Kiparsky (1968a) where linguistic change is characterized as “a window on the form of linguistic competence.” Arguments based partly on diachronic evidence are advanced by Kiparsky (1968b) in support of his contention that the standard theory of generative phonology as outlined in Chomsky and Halle (1968) should be modified to include a condition which, in its strong form, would not permit rules of absolute neutralization in synchronic phonological descriptions. More recently, Hooper (1976) also appeals to evidence from linguistic change in support of a theory of phonology which differs significantly from the standard theory referred to as transformational generative phonology (TGP). Hooper’s theory of natural generative phonology (NGP) is supposed to be characterized by greater concreteness of descriptions than is achieved in the framework of TGP. This greater concreteness of descriptions is supposed to be guaranteed in Hooper’s theory by the inclusion of two constraints on rules. One constraint, the True Generalization Condition, requires that “all rules express transparent surface generalizations, generalizations that are true for all surface forms.” The second constraint, the No-Ordering Condition, does not permit a grammar to contain rules which must be extrinsically ordered. In addition to these constraints, Hooper adopts a model of lexical representation according to which alternants of morphemes must be directly represented in the lexicon in certain cases. In such cases, the lexically specified allomorphs are correctly distributed by morphophonemic (MP) rules. Hooper (1976:23-41) claims that evidence from some phonological developments in certain dialects of Spanish points to the correctness of NGP and, ipso facto, shows the inadequacy of a theory such as TGP which permits the violation of the two conditions mentioned above.

The great majority of linguists in Canada today belong to only the second academic generation of linguists in Canadian universities. Members of the first generation are, of course, still active—in some cases more active than the younger members of their departments. They are characterized, roughly, as founding members of the Canadian Linguistic Association, or as members of long standing. They are also characterized in a few cases as having been the teachers of junior members of the profession, although this is less often the case than it is in other disciplines, partly because there have been very few graduate programs in Linguistics until recently, and partly because there has been little demand for linguists trained in the specialty of the first generation anyway, which is almost unanimously dialect geography, and partly because there has been a decided tendency toward hiring non-Canadians in the social sciences to fill positions in Canadian universities. Now, with the increase in graduate programs in Linguistics, the more diverse specializations, and the national consciousness that Canadian universities can also be served by Canadians, the third generation of linguists will increasingly be selected from the students of the present academic generation, which is how academic generations have been gauged in other cultures for centuries.

This paper is concerned with sentential subjects and sentential objects, subordinate clauses which function as subject or object of their sentence. The clause that John is tall is a sentential subject in (1) and a sentential object in (2):

1. (1) That John is tall is obvious.

2. (2) Bill knows that John is tall.

This paper is concerned in particular with the clause positions in which such sentential subjects and objects, henceforth sentential noun phrases (or NP’s), tend to occur in different languages. In (1), the sentential subject is in clause-initial position. In (2), the sentential object is in clause-final position. More precisely, this paper is concerned with the differences between the position of sentential NP’s and the position of simple NP’s (i.e. nonsentential NP’s). For example, the position of the sentential subject in (1) is also the normal position for simple NP subjects. If we replace the sentential subject in (1) by the simple NP the conclusion, we get (3):

(3) The conclusion is obvious.

G. L. Piggott’s paper “Implications of linguistic change for concrete phonology” does not present diachronic evidence in favor of a theory of phonology with abstract representations and derivations, as it claims, but rather reconstructs a hypothetical sequence of events. This reconstruction is based on a theory of phonology; that is, Piggott reconstructs a sequence of events that is consistent with the theory that he holds. It is not legitimate, therefore, to turn around and use this reconstructed situation as an argument for his theory. We return to this point below.

A somewhat weaker point is in principle possible, and Piggott tries to make it also. This would be to show that some theory cannot provide an historical account of how a certain situation could have arisen. Note that all that is required here is that the theory provide sufficient machinery to produce a plausible reconstruction of a state of affairs. Piggott is quite correct in maintaining that this is a legitimate test of a theory. He argues that the theory he defends provides such an account of the examples he discusses, but that the theory of Hooper (1976), natural generative phonology, cannot provide such an account.

Now that the CJL/RCL has completed a quarter of a century of publication, it is interesting to look back through the early numbers and to note the liveliness of the contributions to the fledgling review of the newly-founded Association. Strong opinions were sometimes offered on matters of linguistic practice and principle; one of these in fact touched off a debate that appeared in the pages of the CJL/RCL in the late fifties. It concerns the interpretation of the English suprasegmentals, especially the number of stress distinctions to be found in English. It was a controversy that went on over a period of a year and a half, and was never resolved to complete satisfaction. On the one side there were the defenders of the American behaviourist position outlined by Trager and Smith (Robinson, Theall and Wevers 1959). This position—that there are four distinctive levels of stress in English—had been given quasi-official status by its reappearance in an introductory textbook (Hill 1958), and had obviously provoked extensive discussion at the 1958 Canadian Summer School of Linguistics in Alberta, out of which discussion came the original article (Drysdale, Mackey and Scargill 1958) declaring that whereas one could get all kinds of phonetic differences of stress, there were only three distinctive levels, not four. The then-editor of the CJL/RCL, Jean-Paul Vinay, took the side of Drysdale, Mackey and Scargill, and added his name to theirs.

Dans un article stimulant dans cette revue, Walker (1978) cherche à établir le statut phonologique des alternances du type (1) en ancien français, qui remontent à une ancienne règle phonétique d’épenthèse introduisant une occlusive à l’intérieur des suites constituées d’une des consonnes /m n ɲ l ʎ s z/ suivie d’une liquide—suites qui résultent en général de la syncope d’une voyelle atone, et dont on note les effets dans les mots (2), par exemple.

Recent changes in Hare, an Athapaskan language of the lower Mackenzie River Valley, require that a rule of epenthesis be ordered in two places in the grammar. The original rule is ordered before a rule of vowel raising. In the innovative dialect of Hare, part of the environment for this epenthesis rule is revised and it must be ordered after the raising rule.

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.

When Kant in his investigation of the nature and validity of human knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) undertook an examination of the nature of Space and Time as the starting point in the discussion, he struck the path which all fruitful philosophical investigation has followed since. Since Space and Time are the two ‘forms’ within which the whole system of life and nature unfolds itself to the human mind, and are at the same time the ‘warp and woof on which man elaborates his mental sense-picture of the world, an examination of these two sense-forms should be the self-evident starting point in any true cosmic philosophy. Yet it seems to have taken something more than a century for the full significance of Kant’s method to sink into the general philosophical consciousness, and it is only in our own time that its fruits have begun to mature. What strikes one in the philosophical writings of the present century, whether starting from mathematics, or science, or pure speculation, is the common assumption in all of them that some exposition of Space and Time must form the foundation of any adequate treatment of the nature of the world, the human mind, and the structure of human knowledge. The title of Professor Alexander’s book, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), is symbolic of the modern point of view.

In a provocative article in a recent issue of this journal, Walker (1978) accounts for Old French (OF) alternations of the type ancestre: ancessour, mendre: menour, prendre:prenons, and cosdre: cousons with a synchronic rule of consonant epenthesis given in (1) below:

The purpose of this remark is to argue that even if OF can be said to have consonant epenthesis as a synchronic phonological process (for some convincing arguments to the contrary, see Morin 1980 [above in this volume]), Walker’s formulation of it leaves a lot to be desired.

On a toujours considéré, semble-t-il, que la nasalisation vocalique régressive procède habituellement par étapes, c’est-à-dire que certaines voyelles se font nasaliser avant d’autres, soit à cause de leur nature même ou à cause du contexte plus ou moins propice dans lequel elles se trouvent. Or, voici qu’après avoir effectué une étude exhaustive sur le développement des voyelles nasales, George Entenman en est arrivé récemment à la conclusion tout à fait opposée. Son hypothèse peut se résumer ainsi: “A language cannot nasalize some vowels before nasal consonants without nasalizing all vowels in this environment” (1977:1). C’est ce qu’il a baptisé le principe “tout ou rien” (the “all-or-nothing” principle).

Bien que les arguments qu’il présente en faveur de ce principe semblent en général solides et bien motivés, je vais tenter de démontrer qu’il y en a un d’entre eux qui s’effondre complètement. L’argument en question découle d’une tentative de rendre compte d’un phénomène de toute évidence phonologique, à savoir la dénasalisation vocalique en français, en des termes morphologiques. Avant d’aborder ce problème particulier, cependant, il est essentiel de le situer dans le contexte de sa théorie.

What is now usually known as the ‘external divine-origin theory’ of language—a misnomer which arose from erroneous theological expositions of the narrative given in the early chapters of Genesis—has still an interest for the modern student; first, because of the prolonged influence which it has had upon language theory in the Western world; and second, because of certain significant facts regarding language which an understanding reader still finds in that old story of language origin, to say nothing of the poetic attractiveness of the story itself.

During the middle ages, and up to the middle of the eighteenth century, the theologians’ mutilated version of the Genesis account of language origin, the divine-origin theory as it came to be called, was the theory held by Christian Europe. In the eighteenth century, however, the question of the probability of a natural rather than a supernatural origin of language began to stir in men’s minds. Rousseau’s essay on the Origin of Languages, about 1750, might be taken as the historical landmark which stands between the old and new points of view. This essay is in itself disappointing to one who is acquainted with Rousseau’s other works. His mental interests were practical rather than speculative, and he had no real convictions about the question of language as he had about education, society, and government. He was interested in language, and the changes in language, in relation to the practical needs of the people in social and national groups, and in diverse climatic conditions, rather than in the origin of language itself as an instrument of human reason. As a consequence his essay on the Origin of Languages—not ‘Language’—is hardly more than a series of disconnected reflections upon various aspects of languages, including a discussion of the relation of language to melody and harmony in music which occupies about one-third of the essay.

In alternative questions, the second clause is frequently incomplete. For example, sentence (2) is understood as synonymous with sentence (1):

1. (1) Did John read the book or did Mary read the book?

2. (2) Did John read the book or did Mary?

This paper addresses the problem of how the incomplete second conjuncts are to be assigned full semantic representations, and thus attempts to account for the synonymy of (1) and (2).

In Being’s floods, in Action’s storm,
I walk and work, above, beneath,
Work and weave in endless motion!
Birth and Death,
An infinite ocean;
A seizing and giving
The fire of living.
’Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply,
And weave the living Robe of Deity.

GOETHE, Song of the Earth-Spirit, Faust, 1774.

If pressed for an exact date of the true beginning of the scientific investigation of language, one would naturally think of the date of the publication of Johann Gottfried Herder’s prize essay on the Origin of Language, 1772. In passing from Rousseau’s essay to Herder’s—although they are separated by only twenty-two years, and by the distance between Paris and Strassburg—we step clearly over the threshold from medievalism into the new world of free philosophical investigation, into an atmosphere as clear as that in which Plato and Aristotle worked. Herder’s essay on language is the starting point for all the scientific work that has since been done on that subject, and has thus a very important historical significance in addition to its permanent scientific value. Its full significance, however, can be fully appreciated only in relation to the general scientific and philosophic thought of the time, and it will be necessary to digress for a few pages to describe the intellectual atmosphere in which Herder worked in the latter half of the eighteenth century in Germany.