Skt. dehí is commonly regarded as the outcome of the pres. impv. dad-dhí > ∗dazdhí, from the present stem dad-. But ddh does not become ∗zdh in Sanskrit. Moreover, as main expression of the imperative ‘give’ we expect not the present form dad-dhí, but the aorist form ∗dā-hí from ∗dā-dhí = Gath. Av. dāidī. This form is lacking. Could dehí be a modification of the missing ∗dāhí? Since dehi is not only Sanskrit, but also Middle Indic, it is possible that Skt. dehí is a transformation of original ∗dāhí by MI dehi. But if Skt. dehí is not original, then we have to explain the Middle Indic stem de-, which is commonly derived from it. The problematic e-vocalism also appears in two non-present optative types, RV deyām and VS deṣma.

Where traditional dialectology usually asks only such questions as, 'What does the vowel of this word sound like at each point under investigation?', structural dialectology goes on to ask, 'How does this vowel sound fit into the phonemic system of each point?' Examples taken from the Sprachatlas der deutschen Schweiz illustrate how this second, structural question can add new insights not only to dialectology but also to general phonological theory, both synchronic and diachronic. Dialects are one of our great linguistic laboratories. In order to exploit them to the full, we must no longer regard the field worker merely as a recording machine (he does that badly, and has higher values) and his informant merely as a talking machine. Even so simple a matter as determining (with the informant's help) whether two words rhyme will both correct recording errors and yield valuable structural information.

It is suggested that the voicing process of Verner's Law did not follow the Germanic shift of IE /p t k kw s/, but was part of it. The shift itself was a form of secondary split, the allophones that were formed with less effort becoming respectively / ð g gw z/ and those that were formed with more effort producing /f þ x xw s/: hence IE ∗dek'- > ∗teg.- > OE -tig 'decade, -ty', beside IE ∗dék- > ∗tex- > OS tehan ‘ten’. Except in initial position, the conditioning factor was the pre-Germanic primary accent. In initial position, the fixation of primary stress inhibited voicing by introducing or preserving more effort: IE ∗pḷnós > Go. fulls ‘full’. If the accent of IE ∗pḷnós had remained unchanged for centuries in Germanic, the Gothic would have been ∗bulls. Voicing was also inhibited in voiceless consonant clusters: ∗oktow > Go. ahtau ‘eight’. Unlike initial syllables, which were word-bound and received primary stress, a proclitic was phrase-bound and never fully accented: thus IE ∗kom'- > ∗gan'- > ∗ga'- > OE ge'-. The voicing process was not completely uniform in Germanic because the fixation of primary stress did not occur simultaneously in all words of all dialects. The frequent absence of medial voicing in Gothic is due to an earlier fixation of initial stress and to the very early separation of Gothic from the other Germanic dialects.

In this study the use of variables for the abbreviation of disjunctive sets of phonological rules is examined. We ask whether there are rule sets which require more than one variable, and answer the question in the affirmative. The evidence consists of a new formulation of the English vowel-shift rule, using a pair of asymmetric features which distinguish four tongue heights for vowels. Within the context of the proposed rule, several theoretical issues concerning rule formalism and phonological change are discussed.

The problem of non-unique phonological representations is examined in its historical context. The discussion treats two types of phonological representations: the traditional phonemic representations and the underlying representations of generative phonology. Both systems allow for non-unique representations. In phonemics, a resolution of this problem was found within the distinctive-feature framework, whereas in generative phonology, unique representations become possible only if one recognizes a theory of phonological markedness.

A set of rules is here presented to account for the changes of Grimm's and Verner's Laws, as well as for the Germanic consonant lengthening. It is shown that the changes which occurred were to some extent predictable from the system out of which they arose. The rules are ordered in such a way that Verner's Law and the consonant lengthening precede the simultaneous development of voiced and voiceless aspirates to spirants.

The paper is concerned only with those time adverbials that are not part of the Verb Phrase (free time adverbials). Taking the rule Adv → Prep NP as part of the base, it is shown how different types of adverbials can be distinguished either by the syntactic features of the lexical items dominated by Adv or by configuration. Each #S# of the deep structure is allowed at most one free adverbial. Surface sentences with more than one free adverbial are derived either by conjoining #S#'s or by unfolding non-restrictive relative clauses within an adverbial. The latter type of derivation applies only to surface strings of adverbials of the same type, the former only to strings of adverbials of different types or to strings of adverbials of the same type joined by und.

It is not generally recognized that near-homonymy may, like homonymy, be a causative factor in language change. Relevant instances are cited from the Germanic languages where near-homonymy has resulted in homonymy contrary to laws of regular sound change, thus proving the causative influence. It then becomes possible to accept similar causation in cases where near-homonymy is followed by loss of a word, as happens frequently with homonymy. Finally, implications of the effects of near-homonymy for the concept of distinctiveness in language are considered.

In Asturian and Central-South Italian dialects, there is a category of collective nouns, pronouns, and definite articles which is usually called ‘neutro de materia’ and considered a continuation of the Latin neuter. This category is not a neuter in the traditional sense of the term, but represents a grammatical category hitherto unrecognized in Romance, the mass-noun, and is to be traced to an (also unsuspected) survival of the Latin ablative, through its use in partitive constructions, first with and then without dē ‘of’.

A brief introduction presents the data to be accounted for. In §1, a transformational derivation is proposed for the possessive adjective construction of modern French, for example ma maison ‘my house’. All of the rules involved are seen to have independent motivation. Several other possessive constructions are examined in §2, and are shown to be surface reflexes of the intermediate stages required by the proposed derivation of possessive adjectives, thus constituting further evidence in support of this derivation. §3 is a somewhat more speculative treatment of other possessive phenomena.

Although it is generally admitted that the thematic verb stems in Indo-European are of more recent origin than the athematics, and have increased at their expense,1 no relative chronology has, to our knowledge, been ventured thus far. The conventional view of the distribution of athematics and thematics seems to be that both types existed even in quite early Proto-Indo-European. Surprise has therefore been expressed that so few simple (uncharacterized) thematics are attested in Hittite,2 and Kronasser even asserts that simple thematics inherited into Hittite were recast as athematics.8

The English passive construction is here viewed essentially as a special case of the verb complement construction, the so-called passive transformation being decomposed into a few more general elementary operations (transformations). Some theoretical implications are also discussed, and general conditions on transformation as an operation are tentatively proposed.

Prosodic features have frequently been related to the syllable, or viewed as phonemes extractable from a continuum of speech. In contrast, the Mezquital Otomi phonological word is the domain in which interacting systems of stress and tone operate. The structure of the word nucleus (simple or complex) determines the rules by which basic tone sequences are modified. A balance of the following components (in ranked order) is crucial to word structure: stress, tone, length, nasalization, glottalization, and syllable release (controlled or ballistic). A separate but interlocking system, that of the function of the phonological phrase in intonation contours, is also discussed.

It is claimed that what and which, both as interrogatives and as relatives, are derived from the same underlying representations, wh + some and wh + that, respectively. It is assumed that, in the basic form of relativization, the two occurrences of the noun modified by a relative clause, in the matrix and the constituent sentences, may take different determiners. Indeed, all of the four possible ways of distributing the two basic determiners in the matrix and the constituent sentences are claimed to be realized in certain types of relativization. A transformation called Definitization which transforms indefinite determiners into definite ones is substantiated in the course of the argument. Some considerations of semantic character are also added.

In §1, a reconsideration of the orthographic evidence for Gothic yields a synchronic distinctive-feature analysis of its phonology. In §2, a general procedure is proposed for determining a Stammbaum, by positing that tree which assumes the fewest rules of sound change from the proto-language to the dialects. In considering the diachronic rules of early Germanic, North and West Germanic are shown to share more rules than do North Germanic and Gothic. Hence the optimal tree must split first into a North-West Germanic branch and an East Germanic one. Available non-linguistic evidence (§3) supports this view.

This study proposes a transformational analysis for Spanish adverbial clauses of time, place, and manner. Sentences such as He arrived when I left are treated as reduced versions of sentences like He arrived at the time when I left. This latter sentence, in turn, is viewed as an alternate form of the following: He arrived at the time at which I left (the Spanish equivalent of this sentence is somewhat less artificial sounding than the English). This last sentence is then derived from two simple sentences (I left at some time; he arrived at the time) by application of a relative clause transformation.