The rule of o-lowering in Swiss German, previously discussed in Kiparsky 1968, is shown both to precede and follow umlaut in some dialects, depending on the specific phonological environment involved. Although this might force one to postulate two lowering rules rather than one, some evidence is given for the unity of the rule. It is hypothesized that ‘rule simplifications’ of the type which result in spread of a rule to new items act like ‘rule additions’ in that they take place at the bottom of the phonological component. A direct counter-example from Demers 1972 is considered and dismissed. Finally, some of the formal consequences of this phenomenon for diachronic and synchronic analysis are explored.

This article explores the idea that obviation systems like those found in the Algonquian languages are a less parochial solution to syntactic organization than is generally thought. Some simple constraints on obviation provide interesting analyses of key facts in Algonquian. Once certain language-particular differences are recognized, a number of syntactic problems in two unrelated languages, Tzotzil (Mayan) and Chamorro (Western Austronesian), yield easily to solutions based on obviation, despite the absence of obviative-based morphology in either language. Hierarchy alignment constraints play a central role in the analysis. The account is articulated within optimality theory, which provides an appropriate framework for representing the fact that these languages must select from their resources for expressing transitive propositions the optimal mode of expression for each such proposition.

The nature of the verbal sign, as of the sign in any semiotic system, must be specified through the relationship between the signans and signatum, as well as through the relations of the given sign to the other signs of the system, both at the level of the signata and at that of the corresponding signantia. In defining a sign of a semiotic system, then, we must consider not only the ‘vertical’ relationship between the two components of a sign taken in isolation, but also the twofold ‘horizontal’ relations existing between the respective components of the interrelated signs. The Saussurean thesis of the arbitrariness of the sign is partial and incomplete in that it specifies only the ‘vertical’ relations, disregarding the nature of the ‘horizontal’ ones. On the other hand, the opposite views on the motivated, iconic nature of the bond between the signans and signatum, as maintained by the adversaries of the Saussurean thesis, involve exclusively the sphere of the ‘horizontal’ relations and cannot refer to the ‘vertical’ relationship, which is characterized in principle by arbitrariness and conventionality. If the verbal sign is conceived of as a unity of the ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ relations, the opposed propositions concerning the nature of the relations between the signans and signatum present themselves not as contradictory, but as complementary to each other (in Niels Bohr's sense of the term), specifying with necessary completeness the essence of the verbal sign.

We contend that attention to signed languages is crucial for a fuller understanding of the processes and mechanisms behind regular sound change in spoken languages. While the label ‘regular sound change’ would seem to limit the object of study to language change in the auditory-vocal channel, a typical assumption is that a visual-gestural modality correlate to regular sound change exists. At the same time, there exists a conflicting position that languages in nonauditory modalities, as they do not deal with sounds, are irrelevant to the study of sound change. These contradictory stances converge in their consequences, leading to the general practice in historical linguistics of not taking evidence from signed languages into account when developing theories of sound change. However, we argue that consideration of the affordances of the visual-gestural modality, and the distinctive aspects of language transmission and demographics in signing communities, is of particular value for refining the field’s understanding of the processes and constraints on regular sound change. Insights from signed languages push us to reframe the processes and mechanisms that lead to regular sound change and to broaden our understanding of why it happens. This has implications for a programmatic exploration of theories of regular sound change.

In examining the history of /ay/-raising before voiceless consonants in Philadelphia, Josef Fruehwald (2016) concludes that either categorical phonological conditioning was present from the very onset of this phonetic change, or the period of purely phonetic conditioning was too brief to be identified. This is based on the observation that raising is phonological in the Philadelphia data: it occurs before voiced flaps that are underlyingly voiceless (as in writing), but not before underlyingly voiced flaps (as in riding). In this response, we provide the first acoustic documentation of an English variety that shows an incipient phase of /ay/-raising where the conditioning environment is purely phonetic.

Shibatani 1973 has suggested that surface phonetic constraints are a necessary part of a psychologically real grammar. I claim that, in addition, such constraints are sufficient—that they are the only true generalizations in a generative grammar, and that morpheme-structure conditions play no independent role (and thus have no place) in phonological theory. Both synchronic and diachronic arguments for this position are presented. An implication of this claim for phonological theory, aside from the obvious change in the form of a grammar, is that, without the possibility of referring to the simplicity of MSC's, analyses based on certain assumptions about the nature of underlying representations can no longer claim support from the theory.

The proposal made in Ross 1967, that transformations which move elements to the right are upward-bounded, is falsified by certain coordination reductions and certain pseudo-cleft constructions. Rightward movements are universally constrained by two weaker BEHAVIORAL RESTRICTIONS: (a) non-constituents are harder to keep in mind than constituents, and (b) two interrupted sequences which begin separately must not be separately continued. The second restriction independently accounts for the unacceptability of center-embeddings to a degree higher than one. The fact that SOME instances of pseudo-clefting are unacceptable, but not ALL, falsifies the claim made in Bach 1971 that Ross' proposed limitation on rightward movements constrains transformational components rather than derivations. The cases considered by Bach and Ross seem to be instances of grammatization and/or strengthening of the two proposed behavioral limitations.

Sign languages have two primary articulation tracts: the two hands. They also have secondary articulation tracts that can be partitioned: the nonmanuals. Thus multiple propositions can be conveyed simultaneously. We have attested at most four simultaneously articulated independent propositions in sign languages, and suggest that this limit follows at least partly from limitations on visual short-term memory to cope with the information received. It appears further that the simultaneous propositions must be connected, often sharing arguments or verbs, an account of which concerns matters of production and of cognitive load. A brief look at simultaneity in spoken language suggests that similar if not identical limitations apply.

Postal (1969) discusses words as anaphoric islands. So-called outbound anaphora was further discussed in a series of papers published in the 1970s through the early 1990s, but inbound anaphora, such as Postal's himite (beside McCarthyite), has received less attention. It is shown here that a wide variety of words in Georgian are based on pronouns, including fully referential personal pronouns, reflexive pronouns, question words, quantifiers, and negative pronouns. Thus, the nonoccuring combinations of English are a language-particular problem.

The absolute construction exemplified by with the bus drivers on strike consists of with plus a constituent that possesses all the characteristics typical of embedded S's, except for having to contain a verb: it serves as a domain for cyclic application of transformations, it serves as a scope for quantifiers and negatives, and its elements do not command elements of the main clause. An analysis of these constituents as underlying S's, subject to optional deletion of be (or of possessional have and its subject) explains why this construction allows adverbs as adjuncts to constituents that normally do not support adverbs. Peculiarities of the distribution of adverbs in the construction support the contention that the NP in with NP PP is an underlying subject of be in some cases, an underlying object of have in others.

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.

This paper presents a theory of the child's acquisition of the phonology of his native language. The theory predicts learning, measured by correct pronunciation of phones, as a function of ease of perception. The general prediction is that the more discriminable phones are learned earlier and the less discriminable ones later. Finally, the theory is compared with some previous suggestions in this field.

This study describes a change in which relative clause extraposition is in the process of being lost in English, Icelandic, French, and Portuguese. This current change in progress has never been observed before, probably because it is so slow that it is undetectable without the aid of multiple diachronic parsed corpora (treebanks) with time depths of over 500 years each. Building on insights from Kiparsky (1995), the study shows that the change may date as far back as the innovation of Proto-Germanic and Proto-Romance relative clauses, as these varieties differentiated from Proto-Indo-European. It also shows that the unusually slow speed of the change is due to partial specialization of the construction along the dimension of prosodic weight, following the argument made at greater length in Fruehwald & Wallenberg 2016. Finally, the change is shown to have important consequences for the syntax of extraposition, supporting the adjunction analysis of Culi- cover and Rochemont (1990). The article also discusses the implications of Sauerland's (2003) analysis of English relative clauses, and while modern English data supports his analysis, the diachronic extraposition data is not yet fine-grained enough to bear on the ‘raising’ analysis of relatives in general. This is identified as an important question for further research on this change.

Recent research has examined the early stages of language development in signed and spoken language. In this paper we discuss claims that, in the timing of early language milestones, there is an advantage for the acquisition of signed languages. In particular, we will review the evidence that the emergence of the first signs and of the first two-sign combinations is precocious in signing children as compared to the appearance of the first words and of the first two-word strings in speaking children. We conclude that the evidence for early emergence of the first signs deserves continued attention, but that the evidence for early syntax in signing children is not at all compelling. Finally, we discuss the import of a short-lived sign advantage in early language acquisition, in terms of understanding maturational timing mechanisms more generally. Specifically, we address the question of whether or not a single timing mechanism underlies early milestones in the acquisition of both vocabulary and syntax.

This article investigates how dependencies are constructed in prenominal relative clauses of Mandarin Chinese by comparing the comprehension of two types of relative clauses: Possessive Relative Clauses (PRCs), where the head noun is associated with a dependent noun phrase in the embedded clause, and Adjunct Relative Clauses (ARCs), where the head noun takes the whole embedded clause as its complement. The results of a naturalness-rating experiment and two self-paced reading experiments showed distinctive reading patterns of PRCs and ARCs. The comprehension of a PRC is sensitive to the grammatical position of the dependent noun in the prenominal clause: retrieval of a dependent noun at the subject position is less costly than that of a dependent noun at VP-internal nonsubject positions. The comprehension of an ARC reflects the structural frequency of the whole prenominal clause: more-canonical structures like SVO sentences were read faster than less frequent structures such as disposal and passive sentences. These results support the importance of structural locality and subject prominence for constructing gap-filler dependencies in prenominal relative clauses.

This article presents novel data from Uzbek, an under-investigated Turkic language, in support of two claims. The first claim is that, despite superficial appearances, Uzbek sluicing-like constructions are not instantiations of genuine sluicing at all. Instead, they are derived from two possible sources—copular clauses and clefts—by reduction strategies that are shown to be independently available in Uzbek (subject drop and copula drop). This result supports a prediction of Merchant's (2001) theory of sluicing: languages with no left-peripheral WH-movement or focus-movement strategy should not exhibit genuine sluicing. The second claim is that Uzbek cleft structures (which may give rise to the sluicing-like construction under reduction) can be subdivided into two types, corresponding to two prominent lines of analysis in preexisting explorations of clefts (descending from Jespersen 1927 and Jespersen 1937). The results support Pinkham and Hankamer's (1975) claim that both analyses may be applicable to subtly distinct structures within one language.

Morphophonemics, as the term is used here, subsumes every phase of the phonemic shape of morphemes: the typical shapes of alternants, the types of alternation, and the various environmental factors (phonological or grammatical) which elicit one alternant or another of those morphemes which appear in more than one shape. This usage is broader than some which have recently been described, for instance by Bloch and by Wells.