This paper attempts to present the Mandarin phonological system after the generative fashion.1 We find it convenient to treat this part of the grammar in two components: namely, a syllable grammar and morphophonemics. The former attempts to designate the structure of the basic syllables independently of the syntactic component of the grammar. It consists of a set of P-rules to generate strings of phonemes for the basic syllables. The latter operates on sequences of these syllables with intrasyllabic information designated by the syllable grammar, and with category and intersyllabic information which can be given by the syntactic component. It consists of T-rules and gives a phonetic representation of sentences as its output.

The adverbials, as far as I am aware, have never been systematically considered in relation to English verbal description and definition, most traditional text-books resolving the relationship in terms of a vaguely-defined notional ‘modification’. Scholars have of course noted the existence of regular formal co-occurrences between temporal adverbials and tense-forms, but this has been only for the most obvious cases, and there has been no general, empirical study of all the mutual restrictions and formally definable correlations in English. For example, Jespersen (1933) introduces adverbials into some sections of his description of English tenses (e.g. 23.43) but omits them from others (e.g. 23.41 or 23.54) where one could suggest a comparable relevance, and in many sections (e.g. 23.63–23.67) gives only a partial picture of the total number of possible relationships. Again, Ward (1954:44) notes the frequency of adverbials with ‘past ordinary’ tenses, but gives only a few examples, and then lists ‘exceptions’ with no apparent order. Adverbials with other tense-forms are given little mention, and are in any case given a different orientation, which makes it difficult to compare the sets of information. This approach seems typical of that found in most teaching handbooks on the subject: one could instance Zandvoort (1957: 58–63), who gives adverbials only incidental mention in his description of present, past and perfect tenses, despite the fact that the majority of his examples involve their obligatory use. However, Ota (1963) has studied in more detail correlations between verb forms and certain adverbs of particular semantic classes in English; and Osman (1964: 28–106) has recently given adverb-tense relationship a great deal of prominence in his exposition of English tenses; but the scope of his handbook does not allow a sufficiently detailed treatment to show the full range and complexity of the situation. (Cf. also Hornby, 1954: Part 2.)

1. Three stages of Hebrew are covered by the enquiry:

(a) a Proto-Hebrew stage (= PH), when I assume Hebrew to have conformed to the language structure of the common Northwest Semitic of the second millennium B.C. Its lineaments can be recovered by a backward reconstruction from the following stage controlled by comparison with the surviving second millennium dialects, Amorite (see Gelb, 1958), Ugaritic (see Gordon, 1955) and Tell el-Amarna Canaanite (see Dhorme, 1951). The theory that Northwest Semitic at this early period was more or less a unity and that a division into Aramaic and Canaanite sub-groupings can be safely carried through only after about 1000 B.C. is now generally accepted; see Moscati, 1956; Garbini, 1960.

It is well known that an English sentence may have its accent, or point of greatest prominence, on any of several syllables. This phenomenon has been called SHIFT.1 It is the feature of English that permits us to render such a sentence as The man can see the boy in a variety of ways, as follows:

The man can see the Boy.

The man can SEE the boy.

The man CAN see the boy.

The MAN can see the boy.

In the representation of syntagmatic relations in language, we may distinguish between a linear sequence of classes, such as ‘adjective followed by noun’, and a non-linear configuration of functions, such as ‘modifier-head relation’ or simply ‘modification’. Both of these have been referred to as ‘structure’, although this term has also been extended to cover paradigmatic as well as syntagmatic relations. For Hjelmslev, for whom ‘structure’ was not a technical term (see e.g. 1961: 74 (=1943: 67)), ‘the structural approach to language … [is] conceived as a purely relational approach to the language pattern’ (1948: quoted in Firth, 1951: 220); among others who have emphasized the relational aspect of such studies are Firth (1957: 17 ff., 1951: 227–8; cf. Robins, 1953; Palmer, 1964a), Tesnière (cf. Robins, 1961: 81 ff.) and Pike(cf. Longacre, 1964: 16). Chomsky's (1964: 32) distinction, using Hockett's terms, between ‘surface structure’ and ‘deep structure’, ‘structure’ here going beyond syntagmatic relations, is extremely valuable and widely accepted: the surface structure of a sentence is defined as ‘a proper bracketing of the linear, temporally given sequence of elements, with the paired brackets labelled by category names’, while the deep structure, which is ‘in general not identical with its surface structure’, is ‘a much more abstract representation of grammatical relations and syntactic organization’.

1. The present paper is a critique of Halliday's ‘Syntax an;’, the consumer' (1964).2 As avid consumers of linguistic theory (our interest stemming from; a very general concern with the psychology of language) we are naturally delighted that Halliday has our welfare at heart. He states that a theory of competence should not be regarded as the terminal point of syntactic study, but that ‘the explanation of linguistic performance’ and ‘the description of language for the purpose of various specific applications’ are important and reasonable goals. With this attitude we enthusiastically concur. Halliday outlines his basic point of departure with the following question (1964: 11–12): ‘Language may be described for a wide range of purposes, or, if that is begging the question I want to ask, there is a wide range of purposes for which a description of language may be used. The question is: do these various aims presuppose different ways of using the same description, or are they best served by descriptions of different kinds? Is there one single “best description” of a language, or are there various possible “best descriptions” according to the purpose in view?’

The fullest account of English imperative sentences considered in the context of a transformational grammar is contained in Katz & Postal (1964: 74–9). Their account forms part of a discussion of the general thesis that transformations do not affect the meaning of sentences, and of the proposal that follows as a natural corollary of this thesis, that the set of optional singulary transformations be restricted to those usually referred to as ‘stylistic’ transformations. Instead of treating imperative sentences as derived from declarative kernels, therefore, they postulate the occurrence of an imperative morpheme (Imp) in the underlying phrase-markers of imperative sentences. This, they assume, marks these structures as the domain of the imperative transformations and imposes certain selectional restrictions upon them. The notion of the Imp morpheme, which is the most original and most important part of Katz and Postal's analysis of imperative sentences, is adopted in this paper and the occurrence of the morpheme in the deep-structure of all imperative sentences is assumed throughout it. In the rest of their analysis, however, Katz and Postal draw upon more traditional ideas, one of which is disputable.

In his illuminating article for the Max Vasmer Festschrift, Jakobson (1956) gave a concise description of the implementation of the voicing feature in Russian obstruents. In addition to stating well-known facts about the pronunciation of contemporary standard Russian, Jakobson brought to the attention of students of Russian phonetics a fact which had been completely overlooked in previous investigations, namely the determinative role of the segment FOLLOWING the morphonemes {v} and {v,} in the distribution of voicing, rather than these sounds themselves. With respect to the feature of voicing, obstruent clusters containing medial {v} or {v,} were demonstrated to be entirely composed of voiced segments or unvoiced segments, depending on the value of the last obstruent in the cluster. Thus it was pointed out that voiceless obstruents were assimilatively voiced not only in Πρосьба [-z, b-] ‘request’, сдача [zd-] ‘submission’, ĸ жене [gž-] ‘to one's wife’, трехДнеВньІЙ [-γd-] ‘3-day’, but also in ОТ ВДоВьІ [-dvd-] ‘from the widow’, с вДовоЙ [zvd-] ‘with the widow’, к вДове [gvd-] ‘to the widow’, оΤ взгляДов [-dvzg-] ‘from the glances’, к взДохам [gvzd-] ‘to the sighs’; not only in зтот гороД [-d | g-] ‘this city, купец бьІЛ [-3|b-] ‘the merchant was (there)’ здесь же [ž-|ž-] ‘but here’, Лечь бьІ [-3|b-] ‘go lie down’, хоть дома [-d,|d-] ‘at least at home’, так зЛо [-g|z-] ‘so maliciously’, запах дьІма [-γ|d-] ‘smell of smoke’, бЛиз берега [-z,|b,-] ‘near the shore’, сквозь доску [-z,|d-] ‘through the board’ but also in как вдова [-g|vd-] [like the widow’, хоть вздохнуЛ [-d, | vzd-] ‘at least he rested’, вот в детстве [-d|vd,-] ‘but in childhood’, чтоб взять, [-b|vz,-] ‘in order to take’, поев вдовоЛь, [v |:d-] ‘having eaten one's fill’, против вдовьІ [-v|:d-] ‘against the widow’, уж в вдовах [-ž|v:d-] ‘already among the widows’, воЛхв же [-γv|ž-] ‘but the sorcerer’, без жертв бьІ [-dv|b-] ‘without sacrifices’, от моЛитв-де [-dv|d,-] ‘supposedly from prayers’, ветвь даже [-d, v,|d-] ‘even the branch’. This treatment of the voicing feature provided the basis of Halle's discussion (1959: 63–5). For some inexplicable reason, the facts brought to light by Jakobson apparently went completely unacknowledged in the Soviet Union (and elsewhere, for that matter, outside the United States) and were not reflected in the works on Russian phonetics which appeared after 1956. Thus, for instance, one notes no revision of the appropriate section in Avanesov (1958); nor in Avanesov & Ožegov (1959).

The purpose of this paper is to outline a classification of Dacorumanian dialects, according to certain morphophonemic particularities chosen as criterial. This classification is (to be sure) only a first step, a kind of first approximation to a more detailed specification of diverse dialectal morphophonemic and phonemic structures occurring in this area.

The relationship between segment and sound is a central concern of phonology.1 A framework for the definition of this relationship is that of distinctive features - proposed by Roman Jakobson and developed by Morris Halle. This framework may be looked at as having two parts: the substantive and the formal. The substantive is made up of the small number of features which, it is claimed (Halle, 1957: 67 ff.), are all that are necessary for describing all the languages of the world - fifteen by the latest count (Halle, 1964a: 329). The formal consists of a number of concepts which appear to have contributed to the definition of the relationship between segment and sound in transformational theory (Chomsky, 1964: 86). Only incidentally will I be concerned with the substantive part of the framework.