In Recent Years there has developed an increasing interest in the contrastive study of languages and in the theoretical principles underlying such study. As different pairs of languages are contrasted the problems inherent in contrastive analysis are more clearly revealed, and each new problem forces a re-examination of contrastive principles. Recent developments in grammatical theory, particularly the development of transformational-generative theory, have also compelled the attention of the contrastive analyst.

Le présent article expose l’utilisation d’un nouveau concept tel qu’il a été présenté à des étudiants francophones dans un cours de lexicologie et de sémantique du français moderne. La nouveauté de ce concept est relative, car il est très proche des sèmes ou sémantèmes familiers aux linguistes. Cependant, si la composante sémantique, telle qu’elle sera définie ci-dessous, ressemble beaucoup aux sèmes dont parle Pierre Guiraud dans ses Structures étymologiques du lexique français (Larousse, 1967) lorsqu’il dit que singe contient en puissance les sèmes de « laideur », « grimace », « espièglerie » (p. 200), par contre elle ne correspond pas vraiment au sémantème ou sème défini par Marouzeau dans son Lexique de la terminologie linguistique, et d’ailleurs Guiraud ne fait pas des sèmes l’utilisation qui est proposée ici.

The description of Old English adverbs found in OE handbooks and grammars is the traditional Greco-Roman one based on function, namely a listing of words that function as modifiers of verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. The result is a morphological classification based on syntactic function.

In contrast, the classification of other OE parts of speech (verbs adjectives, pronouns, nouns) is based on paradigmatic sets marked by characteristic inflectional suffixes. One finds, therefore, inconsistency of classification and description. Whereas verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and nouns are identified as sets marked by morphemes of case, number, tense, etc., adverbs are identified as a set marked by function. However, it is possible to reclassify OE adverbs on a morphemic basis. This paper attempts to provide such an analysis, as well as a morphemic identification of characteristic subsets of OE adverbs.

The increased interest in speech brought about by the development of modern Linguistics has resulted in a corresponding diminution of regard for written texts as a manifestation of language. In fact a majority of linguists, at least in North America, appear to regard only speech as “real language,” and writing as an incompetent attempt to record it, giving “an imperfect and incomplete picture of actual speech.” The purpose of this paper is to show that this attitude reflects a distorted view of the relation of speech and writing, and has had a pernicious effect on the grammatical study of written texts.

In the modern turkic languages there are three words for a non-Muslim, European monarch: kral, kiral, korol. Obviously these words have the same common origin. This paper is an attempt at an explanation of the etymology of the last.

Kral is the term for “king” common to all the South Slavic languages. Although it is not attested in the canon of Old Church Slavonic, it must have been borrowed early enough from the Prankish root karl—that is, Charlemagne—to allow it to undergo the changes common to all roots of the type TorT. The language known as Turkish or Osmanli borrowed this root from the conquered Balkan Slavs to denote a non-Muslim monarch.

The attitude of many humanists toward the computer may be suggested by the reply of the ultimate computer to the ultimate question “Is there a God?” “There is now,” it clicked in reply. To anyone who knows anything at all about computers, this is simply funny; but many humanists take it seriously. They look upon the mighty works and despair. But whatever else it may be, the devilish device is certainly useful for linguistic work. Among its other uses, the computer has been applied with some success to produce concordances of poems, including a concordance of Middle English poems by the “Pearl” poet. It has also been applied to the statistical analysis of Modern English. These two applications of the computer may be combined to solve several problems in the recent approach to Middle English dialectology developed by Angus McIntosh and Michael Samuels.