This paper shows that the proposition, our universal thought process, underlies its linguistic realization, the sentence of a specific language, and provides the theoretical basis for interlingual translation as well as intralingual paraphrase. (An example of componential analysis is shown for some Korean sibling terms.) (Author/AMM)

Use of "the language of observation" as a level of scientific discourse is exemplified. The formal properties of this language are characterized, and the derivability and feasibility of the axiomatic method as applied to it are considered. Also discussed are the theoretical and practical significance of this level with respect to various…

The author, professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, investigates problems in the philosophy of language from the standpoint that language is a rule-governed form of behavior. He takes as his fundamental concept the "speech act," and gives an analysis of what it is to make statements, ask questions, make promises, and…

The paper presents a set of linguistic phenomena illustrative of the notion "universal tendency". Linguistic generalizations are regarded here not as isolated, "true-or-false" propositions but as embedded in a hierarchy of competing forces. An "exception" to a universal is thus seen as the result of the prevalence of another conflicting universal…

A particular aspect of syllable structure, length of syllable margins, was investigated with the aid of a Markov chain model. The model represented explicitly the dynamic relationship between types of syllable structure and the historical processes that affect them. It is proposed that the regularities concerning syllable types (universality of CV…

Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1965), whose linguistic theories have been influential both in his native Denmark and throughout the world, here describes in larger perspective and in a manner intended for the layman, certain aspects of linguistic science. He begins by distinguishing the functional analysis of a single language from the description of a…

Metathesis was examined as a more or less systematic process that tends to preserve segments or features that would otherwise be lost or changed through the effects of other processes, notably reduction, assimilation, epenthesis, et al. It was also shown that metathesis is recessive as opposed to most other competing processes. With one exception,…

Recognition criteria refer to those features which enable the analyst to recognize the item he attempts to ascertain through his elicitation procedure. (DD)

The contention that Esperanto is a natural linguistic system is discussed. Research is cited concerning universals of word order, dominant word order, polar type languages, Esperanto as a verb-subject-object language, and gapping in Esperanto. It is concluded that contrary to grammatical tradition, word order is not and cannot be completely free.…

Six papers dealing with crosslinguistic generalizations are summarized and discussed here. Two of them were about question structure: "Language Universals and Sociocultural Implications in Deviant Usage: Personal Questions in Swedish" by C. Paulston and "Valley Zapotec: Identical Rule for Both wh Question Movement and Relative Clause Constituent…

This collection of working papers contains four papers on varied topics in lintuistic theory. The first paper, "Some Grammatical Correlates of Felicity Conditions and Presuppositions," attempts to show that there is a systematic relationship between what a speaker of a language does in uttering sentences of that language and the syntactic form of…

The paper constitutes an attempt to provide a nonenumerative characterization of agreeing terms and agreement features. The following pertinent statements turn out to be (near) exceptionless: only coreferential terms agree, and for any given language all agreement features are pronominal ones. Four agreement features, gender, number, definiteness,…

The paper begins with a discussion of several recently proposed analyses of nominal compounds in English. It is then suggested that the relations which may appropriately underlie nominal compounds of the type Noun + Noun can best be defined negatively, i.e. by listing those relations between two nouns which cannot underlie compounds rather than…

This work is an English translation of the author's classic "Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze," first published in 1941. It is considered the most representative and comprehensive of the author's phonological writings, dealing not only with phonological typology but related problems of language acquisition and phonemic regression…