In discussing rule opacity as a factor influencing phonological change, Kiparsky 1971 mentions three common fates of opaque rules within the phonological system: loss; re-ordering with respect to other rules to yield greater transparency; and morphologization. In this paper I discuss another sort of systematic reaction to the presence of an opaque rule, a reaction that has so far been overlooked in the discussion of rule opacity: the elimination of opacity-inducing environments in inflectional paradigms through analogic affix replacements. I argue that effects of this sort will continue to be overlooked until we recognize, and deal explicitly with, non-phonological aspects of inflectional change.

Yuman languages allow an unusually large number of instances of non-systematic metathesis affecting a wide variety of consonant types. When we seek an explanation for such apparently random facts, various structural features of Yuman languages (both phonological and morpho-syntactic) are found to produce surface variations which look like metathesis in paradigmatically related forms. This situation, it is claimed, is the catalyst which allows other types of metathesis to establish themselves. The classes of segments involved in the process, as well as the direction in which it proceeds, are matched against some proposed universals; some of these gain additional support from the Yuman data, while others do not fare as well.

It is argued here that both semantic and paradigmatic analyses of word order are needed to understand the phenomenon. Attributive adjective position in French is explored in some detail, with an aim to defining the distinctive feature of meaning associated with pre-position of the adjective. To this end, the nature of modification is discussed, as against that of word order. It is argued that modification concerns the intersection of two different parts of speech, while pre-position involves a presupposition of the lexical meaning of the noun modified.

A number of syntactic constructions claimed by linguists to be restricted to main clauses are shown to occur, in fact, in a variety of subordinate clause types, but only under certain mysterious conditions—basically, when the speaker desires to be understood as committed to the truth of the subordinate clause. Formalization of this notion, however, remains elusive. The analysis of this phenomenon by Hooper & Thompson 1973, while attractive and initially explanatory, is shown to be, before the final analysis, incapable of accounting for the range of embedding environments allowed, which differs from one restricted construction to another. It is shown in the present paper that an adequate solution will involve a complex interaction of several factors—syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic—and the range of data to be accounted for is partially delineated.

This paper briefly re-examines the major drawbacks of the transformationalist approach to word formation, and analyses those aspects of word formation which are most problematic: semantic-syntactic asymmetry, metaphoric usage, and restricted rule productivity. It concentrates on asymmetrical word derivation as opposed to symmetrical and asemantic derivations. A context-sensitive, generative lexical rule model is presented in one example, which assumes the availability of semantic features and a lexical alpha feature. It is claimed that this model overcomes the shortcomings of both the transformationalist and the lexicalist approaches to word formation, and promises the greatest usefulness in further solutions.

A replication of the study by Berlin & Kay 1969, controlling for saturation in the color stimulus materials, lends support to their findings about basic color category universals.

It can be argued that syllable shape is a function of the morpheme structure constraints in a given language—and that, in segments more than one syllable long, the composition of medial clusters is a reflection of those constraints as they apply to initial and final groups. Further, given a convention for syllable bracketing, it is possible to show a further characteristic of medial clusters: namely, that they ideally overlap, i.e. have simultaneous membership of both the preceding and following syllable segment. Examples will be chosen from the diachronic phonology of English to illustrate the last two characteristics of syllables and to further support the claim that the syllable is a phonological prime.

Significant insights into the organization of kinship terminologies, and into methods for their analysis, have resulted from the construction of a computer program that reduces the ranges of kin-terms to kernel kin-types, identifies the operable equivalence rules, and uses the identified rules and kernels to re-expand the full range of the kin-terms. The program is based on the work of Romney and of Lounsbury, and has been run successfully on a number of terminologies.

While reduplication of definite direct objects is routine in the Balkan languages (e.g. Albanian E panë kështjellën? ‘Did they see the castle?’, literally, ‘it they-saw castle-the?’), reduplication of indefinite direct objects has been regarded as ungrammatical or at best exceptional (e.g. Albanian (*E) panë një kështjellë? ‘Did they see a castle?’, literally, ‘(*It) they-saw one castle?’) This paper attempts to show that the latter type of reduplication is not necessarily ungrammatical but that there are instead two kinds of indefinite direct objects, namely specified and non-specified ones. The former may undergo reduplication, the latter may not.

Considerable syntactic evidence from English has been presented in the literature for a rule of NEG-Raising. It is shown here that equivalent or analogous evidence exists in French (time-adverbials, tags, corrective responses, negative particles and polarity items, mood). NEG-Raising and its domain are then reconsidered from a functional perspective, whereby the transformation is shown to be a HEDGING device—operating only in sentences containing a type of pseudo-performative, which also has the function of hedging. Such an analysis not only is supported by the original data, but also automatically accounts for otherwise inexplicable and unrelated syntactic facts.

In current phonological theory, borrowings are assumed to exhibit a fixed set of foreign features which distinguish them from the native vocabulary of a given language. In such a theory, assimilation of the borrowing appears to be a sudden loss of these features. The data presented here indicate that (1) the foreign features are not uniformly distributed over all segments of a given borrowing, and (2) the assimilation of individual features in borrowings to their target phonetic constraints proceeds at different rates. The rate of assimilation is shown to be a function of the general target constraint itself, of the segment class affected by the constraint, and of the syllable on which the constraint operates. It is hypothesized that this rate of assimilation is a measure of the strength or productivity of the rule.

Findings on language use among peers in inter-ethnic work situations in three African cities are presented. A clustering algorithm is used to display relations of similarity and dominance among clusters of speakers according to their language choice in this situation. The explanation of these data, as displayed by the algorithm, promotes the development of theory regarding socio-verbal interaction in uncertain situations which call for reciprocal participant accommodation, such as conversations with peers at work. Specifically, the data suggest that neutrality strategies in language choice are perceived as necessary to make such interactions successful.

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.

It is proposed that NP's determined by the generic indefinite article represent abstract concepts, and as such are not inherently different from indefinite NP's appearing in copulative predicates. A derivation for generic indefinite NP's that reflects this is formulated (and evidence is adduced to show that any cannot underlie generic a); this is shown to be explanatory as regards the phenomenon itself, its relationship to other kinds of generic NP's, and its relationship to other kinds of indefinite NP's. It also enables us to formalize the notion of ‘generic sentence’.