This paper is concerned with sentential subjects and sentential objects, subordinate clauses which function as subject or object of their sentence. The clause that John is tall is a sentential subject in (1) and a sentential object in (2):

1. (1) That John is tall is obvious.

2. (2) Bill knows that John is tall.

This paper is concerned in particular with the clause positions in which such sentential subjects and objects, henceforth sentential noun phrases (or NP’s), tend to occur in different languages. In (1), the sentential subject is in clause-initial position. In (2), the sentential object is in clause-final position. More precisely, this paper is concerned with the differences between the position of sentential NP’s and the position of simple NP’s (i.e. nonsentential NP’s). For example, the position of the sentential subject in (1) is also the normal position for simple NP subjects. If we replace the sentential subject in (1) by the simple NP the conclusion, we get (3):

(3) The conclusion is obvious.

Now that the CJL/RCL has completed a quarter of a century of publication, it is interesting to look back through the early numbers and to note the liveliness of the contributions to the fledgling review of the newly-founded Association. Strong opinions were sometimes offered on matters of linguistic practice and principle; one of these in fact touched off a debate that appeared in the pages of the CJL/RCL in the late fifties. It concerns the interpretation of the English suprasegmentals, especially the number of stress distinctions to be found in English. It was a controversy that went on over a period of a year and a half, and was never resolved to complete satisfaction. On the one side there were the defenders of the American behaviourist position outlined by Trager and Smith (Robinson, Theall and Wevers 1959). This position—that there are four distinctive levels of stress in English—had been given quasi-official status by its reappearance in an introductory textbook (Hill 1958), and had obviously provoked extensive discussion at the 1958 Canadian Summer School of Linguistics in Alberta, out of which discussion came the original article (Drysdale, Mackey and Scargill 1958) declaring that whereas one could get all kinds of phonetic differences of stress, there were only three distinctive levels, not four. The then-editor of the CJL/RCL, Jean-Paul Vinay, took the side of Drysdale, Mackey and Scargill, and added his name to theirs.

Dans un article stimulant dans cette revue, Walker (1978) cherche à établir le statut phonologique des alternances du type (1) en ancien français, qui remontent à une ancienne règle phonétique d’épenthèse introduisant une occlusive à l’intérieur des suites constituées d’une des consonnes /m n ɲ l ʎ s z/ suivie d’une liquide—suites qui résultent en général de la syncope d’une voyelle atone, et dont on note les effets dans les mots (2), par exemple.

In a provocative article in a recent issue of this journal, Walker (1978) accounts for Old French (OF) alternations of the type ancestre: ancessour, mendre: menour, prendre:prenons, and cosdre: cousons with a synchronic rule of consonant epenthesis given in (1) below:

The purpose of this remark is to argue that even if OF can be said to have consonant epenthesis as a synchronic phonological process (for some convincing arguments to the contrary, see Morin 1980 [above in this volume]), Walker’s formulation of it leaves a lot to be desired.