This note examines motivations and consequences of a widely held generative phonological analysis of the Modern French vowel system. This analysis claims that only three degrees of vowel height are distinctive in Modern French. It is argued that the analysis would be improved by adding an additional degree of vowel height, creating a system which…

Following a brief summary of Trubetzkoy's views of Russian word roots, a statistical analysis is performed on a short literary passage in seeking to examine whether all types of roots merely coexist in modern Russian or whether there is an expansion of certain types and a contraction of others. Results point out statistical and semantic…