Consider the following two sentences: (i) a. This man cut the bread b. This man fell In both cases, many traditional accounts (e.g. Zandvoort, 1961: 236–240; Scheurweghs, 1959: 1–19; Chomsky, 1962: 138–140, 1965: 63–64; etc.) would say that we have a single clause (or sentence) which consists of two parts, a subject and a predicate. And the two examples differ in the constitution of the predicate. This distinction between the two is usually described as having to do with transitivity. In (i.a) the verb is said to take an object, and is therefore transitive; in (i.b) this is not the case, and the verb is intransitive.

The grammar of Kasem is being analysed in terms of a hierarchical model (cf. Halliday, 1961; Bendor-Samuel, 1963), the (ascending) levels of relevance to this paper being word, phrase, clause, string, and sentence. (The ‘string’ is the unit which functions in the sentence and consists of a tightly bound sequence of clauses, the non-initial clauses operating under extensive restrictions with respect to their structure. This type of syntactic unit appears to be characteristic of many Gur languages and is often referred to as a ‘series’ or ‘serial construction’. For a recent discussion in some detail of this unit, under the term ‘clause clusters’, see Pike, 1966: 55–78.) At the word level in this hierarchy, a system of categories can be set up to account for the form of every verb word, i.e. so that every verb word can be completely ‘parsed’ or described in terms of these categories. But one of the characteristic features of this system of categories is that there is extensive neutralization between the categories. The question, then, that this paper seeks to discuss is this: are the ambiguities inherent in the verb word resolved within the language as a whole? An answer is here presented which seeks to relate the resolution of the ambiguities to the different levels of the grammatical hierarchy, as set up.

The publication of Syntactic Structures in 1957 stimulated a much-needed re-evaluation among linguists as to the goals of linguistic theory and the nature of language. Part of the discussion which has ensued has centred around the question of linguistic competence versus performance. Competence has been related to performance as ‘langue’ is to ‘parole’. ‘Competence’ thus refers to the ‘underlying system of rules that has been mastered by the speaker-hearer’ (Chomsky, 1965) and ‘performance’ to the way the speaker-hearer utilizes this ‘internalized grammar’ when he actually produces and understands utterances. Despite the continued controversy about this distinction, little can be added to the justifications for it put forth over many decades (cf. Chomsky, 1957, 1964, 1965; Katz, 1964, 1966; Postal, 1966; Sapir, 1933; Levin, 1965; de Saussure, 1916; etc.). Yet there remains much vagueness as to the limits of each and the relationship between the two. For many years the confusion was due to the influence of Bloomfield who centred his attention on the speech act; his aim was the classification of the OUTPUT of performance, i.e. the utterances, and led to no theory about the dynamic process of performance itself (Bloomfield, 1924, 1926, 1927, 1933). While giving lip service to a concern for ‘langue’, his own mechanistic approach negated any possibility for the rules of ‘langue’ to be anything more than lists of recurrent patterns found in ‘parole’. And since he was of the opinion that ‘the physiologic and acoustic description of acts of speech belongs to other sciences than ours’ (Bloomfield, 1926: 153) he did not direct himself to those aspects of ‘parole’ which could explain speech performance.

Although this paper deals with Russian phonology, our aim is not to describe in detail any part of the phonological component of Russian (cf. Lightner, 1966 and forthcoming); rather, we are concerned here with demonstrating the explanatory adequacy of a modified framework of generative phonology.

Schools of thought concerning the study of language in anthropology and in linguistics proper have developed historically along lines that are sometimes convergent, but too often divergent because of a certain gap in communication between the two disciplines. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest the existence of an area of common interest which is at present unrecognized in the literature. I submit that recent work in what anthropologists refer to as ‘formal’ semantic analysis, when considered in the light of transformational linguistics, provides a potentially fruitful point of interdisciplinary interaction which should result in the formulation of a more adequate theory of meaning in the study of language than exists at the moment.