There are currently two prominent competing approaches to the study of the social significance of variation in language. One approach is the observation of the frequency of variants in actual speech and their correlation with social factors. The other approach, scalogram analysis, instead of recording the frequency of variants, systematically shows what the use of one variant implies for the use of another. It is argued here that the observation of frequency leads to generalizations not revealed by the use of scalogram analysis alone. Finally, some suggestions are made concerning the application of both models to problems of the teaching of reading and of socially standard English.

A method is proposed for quantitatively comparing word-meaning lists in related languages, taking into account synonymous lexical representations. This is applied to the Indo-European languages to estimate rates of change of lexical representation for more than a thousand meanings documented by Buck. Comparisons between the distribution of rates for the lexicostatistic test list and other meanings, and between the distributions calculated from Indo-European data and those from Malayo-Polynesian, suggest generalizations of lexicostatistic theory.

This paper argues that Chomsky’s version of the history of linguistics is fundamentally false. With evidence drawn from recent reviews and some additional information, it argues that the term ‘Cartesian’ has no historical justification in regard to the linguistic theory embodied in the 1660 Port-Royal Grammar. The paper then examines the history of linguistics from 1660 to the Romantics, a period in which Chomsky finds much scattered evidence for the persistent dominance of the Cartesian tradition. Contrary to Chomsky’s opinion, however, Locke and not Descartes was the dominating force. Du Marsais was strongly anti-Cartesian and outspokenly pro-Lockean. The basic and most influential work in 18th century linguistic theory was Condillac’s Essai (1746), which is entirely Lockean; this work revived linguistic theory at the mid-century, including universal grammar. There is no conflict between universal grammar and the entirely Locke-derived theoretical work on the origin of language. Chomsky’s version of history is the product of serious deficiencies in knowledge and research, and is an obstacle to the creation of a true and significant history of linguistics.

Pre-Chomskyan linguistics recognized that the phonological systems of natural languages tend to form symmetrical patterns; this insight could be incorporated into generative phonology via a phonological base component, but is not adequately expressed by MS rules. A phonological base would also solve some difficulties in the theory of systematic phonetics. Current lack of interest in phonological patterning has resulted from the increased attention paid to morphophonemics; but the deep vs. surface distinction in phonology can be demonstrated on the basis of patterning even in languages lacking morpho-phonemic alternation. That distinction, it is argued, may be of only historical validity, whether or not alternations occur in the language.

During the past five years it has become clear that phrase structure rules and transformations provide a grossly inadequate characterization of the notion ‘rule of grammar.’ The problem is this: phrase structure rules and transformations are local; they define well-formedness conditions on individual phrase-markers and on pairs of successive phrase-markers. However, certain rules of grammar are global in nature; they extend over entire derivations, or parts of derivations, and cannot be stated in full generality (if at all) by local operations. I have proposed that rules of grammar be considered as well-formedness conditions on derivations (or ‘derivational constraints’). In the most general case, rules of grammar will be global in nature. Phrase structure rules and transformations turn out to be special cases of derivational constraints. From the point of view of linguistic description, the theory of derivational constraints is as much an innovation over transformational grammar as transformational grammar was over phrase structure grammar. In this paper a few of the phenomena that require the postulation of global derivational constraints will be considered. Some of these are purely syntactic in nature; others involve the interaction of syntax and phonology. The cases that involve the interaction of syntax and semantic representations are not considered here, nor is the formal characterization of such constraints included.

This paper argues that there is a surface structure condition in Spanish which allows only one negative particle no to appear as a constituent of each simplex sentence in surface structure. As a result, the number of grammatical negations has no correlation with the number of S-nodes originally found in deep structure in those trees which have lost S-nodes in the course of their derivation. This hypothesis is supported by structures which have undergone Equi-NP Deletion, by sentences with quantifiers, with adjectives, and with certain adverbs, by certain comparative sentences, and by so-called simple sentences.