Dans cet article, nous étudions les règles d’attribution du genre grammatical (GG) à la majorité des types de composés: c’est-à-dire à une catégorie de noms français identifiés en termes de leur structure. A la différence de Spence (1980) qui prétend expliquer la déviance de certains composés en ce qui concerne le GG, et qui se déclare satisfait s’il trouve une explication historique pour la déviance, nous tentons d’expliciter des règles positives pour l’attribution du GG dont l’application soit très générale sinon invariable. Jusqu’à présent, les linguistes qui se sont penchés sur la distribution systématique du GG en français ont donné leur attention surtout à l’influence de la terminaison phonétique ou morpho-phonétique ou de l’initiale phonétique (cf. par exemple, Tucker, Rigault et Lambert 1970; Tucker, Lambert et Rigault 1977; Huot 1983). Nous examinerons donc aussi la relation entre le genre attribué à un type donné de composés et l’influence éventuelle des caractéristiques phonétiques ou morpho-phonétiques identifiées comme favorisant l’un ou l’autre des deux genres.

A number of early grammatical descriptions of Tlingit, a non-Athapaskan Na-Dene language spoken in southeast Alaska and in adjacent areas of Canada, describe the language as being OSV. Evidence is presented in this paper that Tlingit is not OSV.

Until recent years, it was thought that of the six logically possible word orders of subject, verb, and object, only SOV, SVO, VSO, and VOS existed. (See for example Pullum 1977). Since then, however, evidence for the existence of object-initial languages has been presented by Derbyshire (1977) and Derbyshire and Pullum (1981). Almost all of the object-initial languages discussed by Derbyshire and Pullum are spoken in or near the Amazon basin in South America. There is to date no clear case of an object-initial language spoken outside of South America.

The four lexemes bragagner, sberna, seterer and smenaventure are problematic within the text of Ms. marc. fr. 13 since the forms differ from those of any other texts of the time (with the exception of other Franco-Italian texts in the case of bragagner). I will show that the points of difference are phonological and morphological changes resulting from interference patterns with spoken Italian.

Manoscritto marciano francese 13 (St. Mark’s manuscript 13 of the French collection) is an untitled anonymous manuscript from the first half of the 14th century at St. Mark’s Library in Venice. It contains eight chansons de geste. These are the first written versions of Old French epic poetry produced in Italy; that is, they are not copies of Old French manuscripts.

Nous voudrions examiner, dans son ensemble, le processus de grammémisation (Pottier 1974:68) ou passage du lexème au morphème grammatical en québécois. Il y a là un vide à combler, car le sujet n’a guère fait l’objet d’une étude large. Il convient cependant de signaler que, dans un champ lexical particulier, Thibault et Vincent (1981) ont déjà constaté le passage des lexèmes ayant un dénoté de caractère religieux et sacré au statut de sacres (jurons) puis de quantificateurs ou de modalisateurs (modalisateurs assertifs ou qualificatifs).

This paper is concerned with the formulation of a constraint on the set of NPs which can serve as “antecedent” for PRO and floated quantifiers. I will begin by showing that a principle formulated in terms of c-command encounters problems distinguishing between two classes of NPs occurring within PPs. I will then propose that a more comprehensive and successful constraint can be formulated in terms of thematic dependency, a relation holding between an NP and the lexical category which determines its thematic role.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the occurrence of epenthetic vowels and consonants can be attributed to certain properties of syllable structure and some universal principles of syllabification interacting with (phonotactic) constraints, some of which are universal, others language-specific. The analysis of epenthesis proposed here is an elaboration and refinement of earlier proposals by Singh (1980, 1981a, 1981b, 1981c) and Piggott (1981). We believe that this analysis provides an explanation of the phenomenon of epenthesis. The paper is organized in the following way. In Section 1, we identify the phenomenon of epenthesis and summarize the difficulties in capturing generalizations about it within a framework which treats phonological representations as linear sequences of elements. In Section 2, we outline our conception of syllable structure and examine some of the consequences and implications of our assumptions. Section 3 contains an elaboration of the principles of syllabification that underlie our account of epenthesis. In Section 4, we indicate what we think we have managed to explain and point out some of the significance of the explanation provided. Finally, in Section 5, we try to link our work to some long-held views about the relationship of rules to constraints.

0. En latin classique, la troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent se termine en -ănt (cantănt), en -ĕnt (vĭdĕnt), en -ŭnt (dīcŭnt), ou en -ĭŭnt (audĭŭnt, facĭŭnt). En roman commun, le yod de la désinence -ĭŭnt s’efface de sorte que l’on ne retient plus que trois désinences distinctes, à savoir -ănt > -ant, -ĕnt > -ent, et -ŭnt, ĭŭnt >-ont (Fouché 1967:194). L’italien et l’espagnol ont encore éliminé une de ces dernières désinences, l’italien en substituant -ŭnt > -on(o) aux formes primitivement en -ĕnt, l’espagnol en généralisant la désinence -ent > -en, d’où:

One of the principles of grammar introduced in Chomsky (1981) is the Empty Category Principle, which can be stated as follows:

• (i) [α e] must be properly governed.

Proper government, as defined by Chomsky, is of two types (see footnote 2). First, there is proper government by a lexical category of the [±N±V] type. In (2a), for example, the empty category (ei) is properly governed by the verb see, a lexical element of the [-N+V] type. Second, there is proper government by coindexation. In (2b), for example, the empty category in subject position (ei) is properly governed by the coindexed trace in COMP (ti).

In this paper, the consonantal coefficient is defined as the ratio of consonants to vowels occurring in continuous spoken texts in any one language. The vowel coefficient is the reciprocal, i.e. the ratio of vowels to consonants in the same type of texts. For example, if a text consisted of all vowels and no consonants, the value of the consonantal coefficient would be zero. The vocalic coefficient would theoretically be infinity, but no comparison could actually be made. Similarly, in a text that was all consonants and no vowels, the values would be reversed. In a text in which the number of vowels and consonants was equal, the value of both the consonantal coefficient and the vocalic coefficient would be 1, or unity. The use of the coefficient gives us a method for the classification of languages that can be of use in typological studies, just as the coefficient of stem to inflection or vice-versa can give us another index for typological classification.

Paradis (1980:501) observes that

Intrusive stops are traditionally understood as sounds emerging at the phonetic surface as the result of specific coarticulation effects, generally involving the manner of articulation features “nasal”, “continuant” and “lateral” as in French chambre (< Lat. cam(e)ra), être (< Lat. ess(e)re) and OF moldre (< Lat. mol(e)re).

In this paper I will discuss some recent proposals concerning the formal description of this phenomenon. In doing so, I will show that two types of intrusive-stop formations have to be distinguished: one type involves the appearance of an epenthetic consonant inside liquidfinal clusters; the second type concerns intrusive stops which originate inside sequences of consonants which do not have liquids as their second member. More specifically, it will be argued that these two types correlate systematically with a difference in segmental status of the intrusive stop involved: the former type requires the insertion of a consonant, whereas the intrusive element which appears in the latter type does not acquire segmental status.

The prosody of Acadian French has received relatively little attention in formal analyses of the dialect, though few who are acquainted with this variety of French, whether linguist or not, would hesitate to give an impressionistic judgement when asked to describe it. The delivery (débit) is characteristically slow, the melody “chantante” (‘singsong’). V. Lucci (1972:121) attributes this impression to the large number of accents, represented by repeated short, rapid rises in pitch. At the same time, he notes a feature that has been referred to in other descriptions of Canadian varieties of French (cf.J.-D. Gendron 1966:142–146; M. Boudreault 1968:87–99) that results in rhythmic patterns not encountered, in theory, in standard French. This dialectal feature is pretonic syllable lengthening, which, according to Lucci, although it appears to be an accent, is in reality a preaccent, the articulatory strengthening of the syllable preceding the accented syllable, which, of course, is the final one. This feature, whether in Acadian or in other varieties of French (cf. F. Carton 1980:85), is in fact generally ascribed to the durational characteristics of the vowel; whether or not the resulting syllable prominence should be interpreted as accent (displacement of the tonic accent, pretonic stress) has been a matter of dispute. Both Boudreault and Gendron, it is true, in describing the phenomenon, refrain for the most part from referring either to syllable prominence (perceptual judgement or physical measurement) or to accent. The former, however, does attribute one group of examples to the presence of an accent d’insistance; these examples are, in fact, stressable monosyllables, pretonic in the word group. The remainder, according to him, are a residue of intrinsic, etymologically motivated vowel length, the explanation preferred by Gendron. According to Gendron, the tonic accent still falls on the final syllable, although it is weak (in relation to a stronger pretonic syllable), and he criticizes J.-P. Vinay (1955:75), who speaks of displacement of the tonic accent.