It is a truism of diachronic linguistic theory that most historically transparent forms are explainable as compromises between sound shifts (the norm) and a wide range of analogical adjustments (the deviation from the norm). In practice, however, scholars have so far made only modest advances in their attempts at analyzing associative interferences with predictable linguistic change. Specifically, if numerous examples have been collected, often at random, of the extension or complete generalization of an inflectional or derivational morph (say, the marker of a number, a gender, or an agent), little has been ascertained, at least in the Romance domain, on the opposite phenomenon, the preservation of a close-knit paradigmatic pattern at the heavy cost of a break in the consistency of a sound correspondence. Though Sapir, and possibly others before him, eloquently outlined the problem of morphological resistance to a sound shift (Language 196–204, ed. 1921), the precise exemplification and even the technique of analysis remain to be provided on the Romance side—a side credited with controlling a particularly suitable portion of experimental data. The present article is meant to mark just one step, long overdue, in this direction.

In his Notes on Vedic noun-inflexion 31 (1942), F. B. J. Kuiper has recognized in Vedic yu, Av. āyū ‘life, age’ a Proto-Indo-European ∗Aóyu parallel in structure to the ∗dóru, ∗ĝónu, and ∗sónu of Skt. dru, Gk. dóru ‘wood’, Skt. jnu, Gk. gónu ‘knee’, and Skt. snu ‘back’. The initial laryngeal has disappeared without trace in Indo-Iranian, even in the oblique cases (e.g. Avestan gen. yaoš from ∗Ayéws), but is indicated by cognates in European languages: Gk. ain ‘life, age', aiweí, aién, aiés, etc. ‘always’, and Lat. aevus, aevum ‘age, eternity’, all pointing to ∗Aeyw-, with a vocalism comparable to that of Welsh derw ‘oaks’ and Ru. dérevo ‘tree’. Indecisive in this respect are Germanic cognates such as Gothic aiws∗ ‘age, eternity’ and ajukduþs∗ ‘eternity’. Celtic forms such as W oes ‘age, lifetime’, oed ‘age’ and OIr. aís ‘age; people’ seem to lack ∗w and are not certainly cognate with the family of Skt. yu and Lat. aevum (cf. Pedersen, VKG 1.176, Walde-Pokorny 1.7, Pokorny IEW 11, and Vendryes, Lexique étymologique de l'irlandais ancien, A 21).

In a recent article Stockwell, Bowen, and Silva-Fuenzalida were able to prove that word boundary in Spanish is phonologically significant, that is to say phonemic, determining the occurrence of particular allophones within otherwise identical environments. This may also be expressed by saying that a phoneme of juncture occurs between some words in Spanish. The authors compare items like the following: [eŋoxo] en ojo ‘in (the) eye’ vs. [eneros] eneros ‘Januaries’ (a contrast found in the Caribbean and Central American areas and elsewhere); [ezdeaki] vs. [ezðeaki] es de aqui ‘he's from here’ (both forms found in all dialects). To avoid setting up [ŋ], [n], [ð], and [d] as four separate phonemes, they assume a juncture to exist in the phrases, en + oxo/ and /es + de + aki/. Hence they analyze [ŋ] and [d] as the allophones of /n/ and /d/ proper before and after plus juncture respectively.

In the Swabian dialect there is the word [mie] which means ‘brake, brake shoe, or device, at the back of a cart, for arresting or stopping the motion of a cart’. The etymology of the word has always been a subject of some controversy. The present paper attempts to bring to light new evidence concerning the etymology and perhaps to remove the controversial aspects of it.

Chomsky's rules do not at present generate intonation patterns as elements in terminal strings, nor do they show the optional and obligatory choices of intonation patterns that are available with any given sequence of formatives. The following modifications of his rules are suggested as a way of incorporating intonation patterns.

A discussion of color categories as they function in contexts which are unfamiliar to the reader introduces frustrations and misunderstandings, particularly when the reader's concerns are practical as well as academic and when they involve cross-cultural communication and interaction, for example during anthropological, psychological, or medical research. The reader who questions this observation may enjoy reading the following passage a second time, after he leaves the final word of our article.

It has generally been assumed that a linguist would never encounter in the course of his linguistic practice a case of two different phonemes with mutually exclusive distributions and with allophones phonetically similar. This, however, is the case in the phonemic system of Toba-Batak, a Malayo-Polynesian language of northern Sumatra. In that language the two phonemes /o/ and /ɔ/ have phonetically similar allophones, for they are adjacent vowels on the vowel chart; and the two are so distributed that no two whole utterances are distinguished solely by the alternation /o/ ∼ /ɔ/. There are, to be sure, two minimal pairs on the word level: /jolo/ ‘front’ ∼ /jɔlɔ/ polite particle, and /do/ ‘do (in the tonic sol-fa)’ ∼ /dɔ/ syntactic particle. But these minimal pairs are enough to demonstrate that the two phonemes contrast only if we take the lenient approach to the problem of phonemic analysis exemplified by Zellig Harris's 1941 statement: ‘In identical environment (distribution) two sounds are assigned to two phonemes if their difference distinguishes one morpheme from another.’ That is to say, if we are willing to assume that phonemic analysis may comfortably be based on a previous morphemic analysis, our Toba-Batak problem is solved without difficulty.

It is odd that linguists, who pride themselves on the rigor and scientific nature of many of their concepts, should nevertheless be so tolerant of vague, unverified statements in some parts of their field. To take an example, Bloch has made many contributions to linguistic theory in a long series of excellent publications, but he does not appear to have adopted any scientific procedure to check the validity of the phonetic statements (e.g. those about tongue positions during vowel sounds) which often occur in these works. It seems as if he regards the justification of phonetic statements as outside his field as a linguist. Thus he says, ‘Qualities are identified by ear; but in linguistic works they are traditionally defined in terms of their assumed production by the vocal organs.’ This uncritical acceptance of the traditional descriptive techniques is, as we shall show, inadvisable. Disclaimers such as ‘articulatory terminology is used only because a usable auditory terminology has not yet been developed’ (loc.cit.) are not sufficient excuses for making seemingly dogmatic assertions about physiological facts.