[0. Summary.—1. The method of analysis: 1.1. Individual co-occurrence; 1.2. Constructional status; 1.3. Transformations defined; 1.4. Determining the evidence.—2. Co-occurrence as a structural property: 2.1. Dependent elements in constructions; 2.2. Considerations from co-occurrence; 2.3. P N and D; 2.4. C; 2.5. v; 2.6. Pro-morphemes; 2.7. Two-V constructions; 2.8. V N N; 2.9. Summary of constructions.—3. Transformations in sentence sequences: 3.1. Pro-morphemes and zero recurrence in sentence sequences; 3.2. Types of sentence combination; 3.3. The question sequence; 3.4. Matched sentences; 3.5. Conjunctions; 3.6. Word-sharing; 3.7. Constructionally included sentences; 3.8. Sentences combined by wh-; 3.9. Summary of sentence sequences.—4. The transformations of English: 4.1. S ⟷ S; 4.2. S ⟷ S2; 4.3. S ⟷ N; 4.4. Many-one transformations ; 4.5. Quasi-transforformations.—5. The place of transformations in linguistic structure: 5.1. Elementary transformations; 5.2. The algebra of transformations; 5.3. Addition (concatenation) of transformed sentences; 5.4. The kernel; 5.5. Effect of transformations in the language structure; 5.6. Co-occurrence and transformation in structural theory; 5.7. Applications.]

The present interest in verbal aspect is largely due to the research of the Slavicists of the last century. Although many other languages (IE or not) have something which bears a strong resemblance to the categories of punctual, iterative, and durative as they appear in the Slavic languages, there are but few in which such a distinction is so clearly a part of the grammatical, nonlexical structure. Nevertheless, Slavic verb aspect has attracted the attention of some linguists to comparable semantic categories in other languages. This concept has been particularly fruitful for IE linguistics. In PIE the aspectual meanings are most particularly expressed by verbal themes, i.e. elements between the root and the ending; this process is described by Meillet and Vendryes (Traité de grammaire comparée §257) as expressing ‘les modalités de la durée, suivant que l'on considère le procès dans un point ou dans l'ensemble de son développement, dans son début ou dans son terme, suivant qu'on le suppose inachevé ou achevé, limité à lui-même ou prolongé sans un résultat, etc.‘

Two theories are held concerning the phonetic nature of the laryngeal phonemes. Ferdinand de Saussure originally conceived of the hypothetical phonemes, later partially identified with the laryngeals of Hittite, as sonants. He regarded the long vowels of heavy bases as the result of earlier diphthongs or of full-grade vowel plus consonantal allophone of one of these sonants plus a consonant. PIE he considered to be the vocalic allophone of the sonant standing between consonants in zero grade of the root. Saussure also derived the ‘long vocalic sonants’ of Proto-Indo-European by a development parallel to that which produced the long full-grade vowels. His view that what we now call laryngeals were phonemes having both vocalic and consonantal variants was on the whole retained by Albert Cuny, Walter Couvreur, and Holger Pedersen, although the number of laryngeals and the details concerning their development varied from scholar to scholar.

There is a period in the history of the German language of which we know relatively little, although it is much better documented than the Old High German period, where every phonetic detail has been intensively studied by several generations of scholars. I refer to the stage after the phonologizations of the umlaut variants were completed and before Luther and his precursors and contemporaries demanded a unified Schriftdialekt, the major feature of which was to be a uniform vocalism. As Fourquet has pointed out, this period was one marked by a large number of changes. To the traditional historical phoneticians these changes were ‘spontaneous’; that is to say, since they were phonetically unconditioned they were also inexplicable. Fourquet further suggests that this period may be the period needed, the period particularly favorable to testing and sharpening the methods of structural diachronic phonemics with the help of the descriptions that modern dialectology has put at our disposal. The following is an attempt at a structural history of the vocalism of Middle Bavarian during this period and up to the present time. Since the term Middle Bavarian covers a huge dialect area with many geographical variations, I must add here that the specific ‘target dialect’ of this study is that of the Salzachgau. It is spoken in a region about 80 km. east-southeast of Munich and 40 km. north-northwest of Salzburg. This area was under Austrian rule until the Treaty of Frankfurt in 1810, and has since belonged to Bavaria.

One of the most common items in the Albanian vocabulary, plak ‘old man’, pl. pleq, f. plakë ‘old woman’, has never received a conclusive etymological explanation. Tagliavini (L'albanese di Dalmazia 222–3), following Jokl, properly rejects Meyer's connection with Gk. palaiós. The latter must be related to pálai, and this in turn, together with Skt. ciráḥ and Welsh pell, to IE *kwel-; Pokorny accepts this doctrine (IEW 640). Like Jokl, Tagliavini and Pokorny (IEW 804–5) relate plak to Gk. peliós, poliós, etc., under a base *pel-. This seems like a good fit. But, as we shall see, it is not necessary to follow Jokl in considering the final -ak a suffix from Slavic. Not only does the word bear all the appearances of belonging to the old layer of the vocabulary; there is no evidence that so tenuous an element as pl- could have been segmented as a productive base to receive a borrowed suffix as late as the first millenium a.d. Furthermore, the conservative Greek enclaves show an initial cluster pl-, with no trace of an intervening vowel.

It seems to be a universally accepted view that the Old Irish feminine numerals, nom. teoir, tenir ‘three’, acc. and gen. téora, dat. téoraib, and nom. cethéoir ‘four’, acc. and gen. cethéora, dat. cethéoraib, are derived from PIE stem forms *tisor- and *kwetesor-, with a different ablaut grade of the suffix from the equivalent Aryan forms, Skt. tisrás, Av. tišrō ‘three’ and Skt. cátasras, Av. cataŋrō ‘four’. This is the view presented by the Celtic handbooks, e.g. Thurneysen, A grammar of Old Irish 246; Pedersen, VKG 2.127-8; Lewis and Pedersen, CCG 188. Cf. also Pokorny, KZ 47.160-1 (1916); Walde-Pokorny 1.512, 753, and Ida. etym. Wb. 642-3.

The first question to be considered here is whether the traditional view concerning the positional restriction of the phoneme /h/ in Modern English has been successfully challenged or not. Before considering the evidence and the arguments advanced in favor of a new doctrine, we shall give an outline of the traditional view in structural terms and point out the factual basis on which it rests. In doing so, we shall have occasion to call attention to structural facts in support of the traditional view that have either been overlooked or underrated.

The verbs bregða ‘to dart, brandish’, brá: brugðum, brugðenn, and drekka ‘to drink’, drakk: drukkum, drukkenn belong to the 3rd ablaut series. The past participles brugðenn: drukkenn are phonetically irregular, in that we should expect here the α-umlaut of the radical vowel u > o: *brugðanar > *brogðenn (cf. ONorw. brogðenn), *drunkanar > *drokkenn (cf. *sunkwanar > sokkenn ‘sunk‘). It is obvious that the radical vowel u in brugðenn: drukkenn does not represent the original u, but a later analogical restoration of u in place of *o. This restoration has never been satisfactorily explained. One is tempted to explain it as borrowed from the preterit plural stem (brugð-um: drukk-um), but this hypothesis is unsatisfactory because it leaves unexplained the reason for a borrowing restricted to these two forms. Noreen and Bethge assume the borrowing theory in the case of drukkenn, but do not apply it to brugðenn, for which they give no explanation. It is difficult to understand this inconsistency, since in the two forms the phonetic conditions are apparently parallel so far as the a-umlaut of u > o is concerned.

The position of stress is generally recognized as contrastive in modern Persian, and examples of minimal contrast are often cited, such as máhi ‘a month’ : mahí ‘fish’. But grammars of Persian fail to give a complete account of the distribution of stress and most dictionaries give either sporadic and unreliable indication of stress or none at all. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine in some detail the position of word stress and its role in Persian morphology; but it will be necessary in addition to describe the phonological status of stress and to offer some preliminary observations on patterns of sentence stress and their role in the syntax of spoken Persian. Finally, some comparative and historical notes are appended.

The Finnish nominal declension has fourteen eases and two numbers. There is no distinction of gender. Case and number are separate formal entities, the case markers for eleven of the fourteen cases being identical in the singular and the plural. The genitive case is one instance in which the case endings are not the same in the two numbers. The other two are the illative and nominative.

[The question of the phonemic status of *i and *e in Proto-Germanic hinges on the acceptance of two alleged sound-changes, *e to *i before *u, and *i to *e before a-sounds. If we deny the occurrence of these two sound changes, as most recent treatments of the problem do, then *i and *e are members of different phonemes. It is shown here, however, that the two sound changes can be defended. It is therefore assumed that *i and *e were members of the same phoneme in Proto-Germanic, and this assumption is strengthened by the demonstration that it offers a better explanation for the situation in OHG and Gothic than is offered by the assumption of a phonemic difference.]

The present paper is not a programmatic statement, offering a theoretical base for the analysis of style, but the application of descriptive techniques to some aspects of style in a particular language, Persian. Linguists have generally been accustomed to restricting their analyses to a given style; this has been useful in presenting a consistent and coherent picture. The introduction of a stylistic frame of reference will enable us to deal more fully with each language, and, in my opinion, to present an even more consistent and coherent picture by defining what were previously called ‘free variants’.