Physiological, acoustic, and perceptual data indicate that the timing of events at the glottis relative to articulation differentiates homorganic stops in many languages. Such categories are variously described in terms of voicing, aspiration, and force of articulation. Chomsky & Halle 1968 have proposed a universal set of phonetic features, four of which—voice, tensity, glottal constriction, and heightened subglottal pressure—allegedly operate to control the onset timing of laryngeal pulsing. But the observational basis for their analysis is flimsy, and Chomsky & Halle have no substantive argument for rejecting the possibility of temporal control of laryngeal function.

Chomsky's paper ‘Remarks on nominalization’ (1970) argues that there are three properties of derived nominals in English which indicate that they should not be derived by a transformational rule of nominalization. The arguments are not convincing, however. In each case, the properties give at least as much support to a transformational analysis as to a non-transformational (‘lexicalist‘) one.

Recent work in generative grammar has demonstrated the relationship between surface structure constraints and transformational rules. In some cases, various unrelated rules have been found to interact, and, in so doing, to satisfy a given constraint, characterized as a target.

Evidence is presented that Vallader, a Romantsch dialect, has a phonological target, realized by a number of rules, some peculiar to that dialect. In addition, Vallader shares a syntactic deletion rule with the other Romantsch dialects. In order to satisfy both of these conditions at once, Vallader has resorted to paradigmatic borrowing for one form of the present indicative.

Three recent analyses of Arabic topic-comment sentences are re-examined, and some advantages of generating these structures as NP plus an embedded S, rather than by an optional transformation extracting a topic from an ordinary S, are pointed out. The possibility of topic-comment sentences being embedded as relative clauses is examined, and a severe restriction is proposed on the structure of the sentences to be embedded as relative clauses.

Alteration of root consonants is a frequent means of expressing the diminutive in many of the languages of western North America. Interlingual comparison reveals phonetic consistencies between diminutive shifts of the languages for which information on sound symbolism is available. Increased hardness of articulation and higher pitch constitute the phonetic bases of diminutive shifting. Markedness and the form of the phonemic system are less important than phonetic criteria in determining shift types. In spite of gaps in the available data, some observations can be made concerning areal distribution and historical implications of shift types.

The initial section of this paper states some basic assumptions about distinctive features, and describes the ten features of Tarascan and their combination into 32 morphophonemes. The second part treats six special problems of phonetic-phonological interpretation. The third demonstrates an intersection between sets defined by distinctive oppositions and sets defined by distributional criteria, leading to a taxonomy that is characterized by internally motivated relations of class inclusion. Finally, the discussion turns to the theoretical implications of such intersections and, by analogy, of other patterning which is not essential to inventories of units or linear orderings of rules.

The notions ‘taxonomy’ and ‘semantic contrast’ have played an important role in ethnographic semantics, but they are not so simple as is sometimes supposed. In particular, ‘level of contrast’ is an ill-defined and misleading term. When one formulates the notion ‘taxonomy’ in a precise way, as is done here, light is shed on several questions of lexical semantics involving the notion of semantic contrast. For example, several different types of semantic contrast relation, all appearing to have empirical reality, can be formally defined.

The holophrastic nature of children's one-word utterances has long been recognized by linguists. The child will use gesture, intonation, and a single word to convey a variety of messages. Syntactic models of grammar, however, are not equipped to capture adequately this early stage of language development. Fillmore's case grammar comes closer, but is still based on the syntactic category of verb in the deep structure. It is suggested that Fillmore's model can be adapted to account for this early stage if verb is replaced by a semantic category. This category is semantic transitivity, which designates a proposition as communicating either an act or a state. With this adaptation made, it is also suggested how gestures and intonation can be formally included in the semantic model for representing one-word utterances. An analysis is then presented of the one-word utterances recorded by Leopold. The results show that children's early one-word utterances convey states, while later ones refer to actions.