The attraction of the negative to subject any is an invariant rule for all dialects of English, and appears to respond to the distributive and hypothetical features of this indeterminate. Negative concord, on the other hand, is a variable rule which distributes the negative rightward in response to affective factors. It is progressively extended from one dialect to another in an implicational series which initiates negation in new positions as the rule approaches obligatory status in the original environments.

This paper demonstrates that the rules of the transformational stress cycle can be rewritten and simplified by substituting binary suprasegmental features for degrees of stress. The new prosodic features proposed for English are: (1) heavy, (2) accent, (3) intonation, (4) cadence, (5) endglide, and (6) emphasis. This binary suprasegmental feature system accounts for the grammar-expounding prosodic distinctions of English in an intuitively satisfying way; it factors out accentual and intonational phenomena conflated in ‘stress’; and it incorporates linguistically significant generalizations about the syntactic conditioning of prosodic patterns. In addition, it explains rhythmic and stylistic variations disregarded by previous stress rules; and it allows revision of the stress cycle in ways which enhance its economy and explanatory power while retaining its insights and concinnities.

A numerical model is developed in order to establish the extent to which the principle of maximal perceptual contrast can be used in phonological theory to explain the phonetic structure of vowel systems. Preliminary results obtained with the model indicate that perceptual contrast appears to play an important role as a determinant of such systems. Therefore, it is likely that this principle (along with other factors) should be included among the variables in an explanatory phonological theory. However, the incorporation of numerically stated conditions on phonological structure appears to presuppose a formalism different from that which has developed within current descriptions of phonology. Some refinements and extensions of the present framework are suggested. It is proposed that predictions of phonological facts be derived as consequences of the structure of the mechanisms available for human speech communication and the optimization of their use. Such an extension would constitute a theory that would be different from traditional ‘Saussurean’ linguistics in several respects; e.g., it would be quantitative, and deliberately substance-based. The research reported represents a preliminary attempt to apply such a program.

A certain class of vowel changes caused by consonants in Germanic languages, foremost among them the OHG monophthongization (ai→ē before h, r, w, #; au→ō before h, r, dentals, #), have never been given a systematic explanatory formulation. I show in this paper that all these changes are height assimilation rules. This explanation requires the introduction of a new convention into the theory of phonology: assimilatory features in a rule environment must be interpreted as relative to the corresponding features in each of the assimilable segments. It follows that an assimilation rule may define different natural environment classes for each assimilable segment. E.g., h, r, w and h, r, dentals form natural lowering classes for front and back vowels, respectively, because h, r are low relative to all high vowels (cf. Go. i→ε, u→ɔ before h, , r), while w is low relative only to front high vowels, and dentals are low relative only to back high vowels. The assimilatory nature of these changes and the relativity principle are further supported with evidence from other Germanic languages and from Spanish, Quechua, and Diegueño. The following theoretical conclusions are drawn from this study: (a) At least two height features have to be distinguished in consonants, one for the front vowel region, the other for the back vowel region. (b) Certain detail information must be specified before binary choices are made. (c) Certain redundancy rules must be formulated in such a way that they apply in a definite order (e.g., height in dentals depends on their degree of anteriority). (d) Generally, more articulatory detail has to be accommodated by phonological theory.

Various proposals for treating the word even in a transformational grammar of English are reviewed. It is shown that the word cannot be derived from a structure in which it is directly associated with that portion of the sentence which constitutes its semantic scope. An alternative account based on principles of interpretation of derived structure is sketched and motivated. The semantic content of the word is suggested as the source of limitations on its appearance within the sentence.

Traditional transformational grammar attempts to define the conditions on the applicability of grammatical rules on the basis of superficial syntactic environment alone. This paper discusses a number of examples in several languages that show that such a goal is unattainable—that, in order to predict correctly the applicability of many rules, one must be able to refer to assumptions about the social context of an utterance, as well as to other implicit assumptions made by the participants in a discourse.