Le point de vue comparatif a ouvert de fructueux champs de recherches aux historiens de la littérature. Il n’y a pas de raison pour qu’il ne se révèle pas également fécond en linguistique. Il existe déjà des ouvrages de grammaire comparée, en petit nombre cependant. Mais à mesure que les langues seront mieux connues et plus amplement décrites, la méthode des rapprochements trouvera davantage l’occasion de s’exercer.

Ce qui la justifie, c’est qu’elle permet de faire sur les choses comparées des observations qui ne seraient guère possibles autrement. Il y a, par exemple, une certaine valeur de la voix pronominale en français qui ne frappe que lorsqu’on établit une comparaison avec d’autres langues, par exemple le latin et l’anglais. Celui qui étudie le français sans regarder au dehors risque fort de ne pas apercevoir un aspect caractéristique qui n’apparaît guère que par contraste.

This paper attempts to extend a theory of description for songs belonging to non-literate societies; this theory was first described by R. H. Robins, of the Department of Linguistics of the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London and a former colleague of the late J. R. Firth. The author has tried to develop the theory a little further and has applied it to the analysis of two Haida love songs.

Although a preliminary survey of the vocabulary and pronunciation of a Central Newfoundland dialect is the chief concern of this paper, some tentative observations about the development of Newfoundland dialect as a whole may perhaps also be put forward here. Both the terms discussed and the observations made are based primarily on a field-trip made in the Summer of 1963 as part of the expanding programme of research in dialect, toponymy, and folklore which is now being carried out at Memorial University. Some of the theoretical points are drawn both from the fieldwork and a sampling of the material available in the University’s Folklore and Dialect Archives. From these sources it would appear that two main speech-groups probably exist in Newfoundland as a whole, one descended from Southern Irish and the other from the English West Country. Historical evidence of settlement in Newfoundland of course supports this, but proof of such a hypothesis as regards the language must await further collecting and more intensive analysis. However, the dialectal differences so far examined seem to indicate that this is the probable pattern.

This article attempts to consider various aspects of the change from verse to prose romances and various linguistic problems related to the rendering of verse into prose.

In France towards the end of the Middle Ages, especially during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, prose became the pre-eminent medium for works of narrative fiction, and many of the verse narratives of the previous centuries were rewritten to conform to this change in taste and form. Georges Doutrepont lists some 55 epic poems and some 18 adventure romances that were revised in this manner, and it would be unwise to regard his catalogue as complete. Although Doutrepont analyzes a few of these “mises-en-prose,” his analyses are largely concerned with the appearance of the manuscripts, their dates, and the over-all expansion or condensation of the narratives.