A study of French "wh" questions, particularly questions using "que" and "quoi," looks at conventional syntactic explanations and presents a new analysis. Relevant facts and pertinent claims about these questions are reviewed, the researcher's assumptions about the working of Wh questions are explained, the new…

A study investigated the nature of clear and dark sounds (resonance) in English, focusing on the features associated with the lateral consonant /l/. Subjects were three male undergraduate students and one male university faculty member, all native speakers of different English varieties. Each subject read aloud 27 short phrases or sentences. Using…

The relationship between turn-regulation, the phonetic features of pitch, and loudness is examined in a study of two recorded natural conversations in Akan. Analysis of patterns in turn-delimitation suggests that (1) diminuendo loudness, a low pitch height, and falling pitch movement are treated by turn-occupants and their co-participants as…

Mestreechs, the dialect of Dutch spoken in Maastricht, the Netherlands, is analyzed for patterns of phonological duration or quantity. Two forms of prosody, hard (H) and slurred (S), are distinguished and their distribution is examined, making reference to previous research on Dutch phonology and on the realization of prosody in Northern European…

An analysis of subject placement in Italian argues that placement is not determined entirely by case, but also partly by interpretational considerations. The crucial step in the argument is that there are independent well-formedness conditions on discourse structures and that the apparent interpretational effects on preposed subjects of…

Early explanations of sound change were often sought in extralinguistic factors such as climate or the speakers' physiology. More recently, scholars have been reluctant to explain changes this way, but the most widely accepted extralinguistic explanation is the substratum theory. Other linguists, notably the Prague group, looked to the linguistic…

A study of tone and accent in Qafar, a Cushitic language characterized by tonal rather than stress accent, modifies an earlier claim made about the relationship between accent and gender. The newer study makes a proposal that simplifies the account of gender in that this category is seen as determined rather than determining. This further suggests…

Much earlier controversy surrounding the Chinese "ba" construction stems from dissention over whether or not "ba" has any independent semantic content. "Ba" was assumed either to be a purely formal particle whose function was to assign case, or to have semantic content translating into thematic content. However, under the hypothesis that abstract…

In a tone language, tonal distinctions between words in sequence can often be analyzed using the same devices that are applied within the word (e.g., downdrift or downstep). However, it is proposed here that Sandawe is a tone language in which the tonal relationships between constituents in clause structure, and between constituents in phrase…

The recitation of a nineteenth century Swahili poem is analyzed for the devices in spoken Swahili used by the performer to keep the audience's attention. The poem has a very formal structure in both rhyme, rhythm, and words linking one stanza to the next, giving it great rigidity. The primary focus of the analysis is on three variables:…

The Kalenjin group of languages, spoken mainly in western Kenya, displays a harmony system involving the phonological feature Advanced Tongue Root ([ATR]). The study reported here addresses issues of the phonological representation of the [ATR] in Kalenjin and its phonetic interpretation. Specifically, it is shown that (1) the harmony system…

A study describing Finnish phonetics and analyzing prosodic properties is reported. Subjects were two female 17-year-olds, speakers of standard Finnish and well acquainted with each other. Data were drawn from two sources: a conversation between the two, in which one described a picture so the other could draw it, and one a set of stories narrated…

Many tone languages exhibit some form of downdrift or automatic downstep, the lowering of high tones separated by low tones. In extreme cases, the realization of high tones at the end of a domain (such as the sentence) may be lower than the realization of low tones at the beginning. Tone languages with this property are cross-level tone languages.…

A three-tiered statistical model for predicting the temporal structure of French, as produced by a single, highly fluent subject at a fast speech rate, is outlined. The first tier models segmental influences due to phoneme type and contextual interactions between phoneme types. The second tier models syllable-level influences of lexical versus…

An analysis of the structure and functioning of Modern Greek gerundival constructions is presented. First, it is argued that there are clear differences between gerunds and participles. Issues concerning the temporal interpretation of gerunds are considered, and an account is given that postulates the existence of a covert temporal operator like…