GENGO KENKYU (Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan)

This paper is an attempt to show theoretically the possible range of sentence structures of languages. The author's principle is that this problem can be solved if we approach it, first, from the viewpoint that language must reflect the ways of being of the real world so as to be able to be useful as a way of communication and, second, from the viewpoint that language must be so systematic that it can be learn and spoken by every one in the language-speaking society.
The first property of language determines the possible range of the sentence structures. The second not only determines this range in its own way but also makes the language choose one or a few from many possible structures.
The author shows some fundamental theoretically deduced results which seem to him universal or almost universal.

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In the Castilian dialect which is considered standard Spanish, once a phonological change occurs and is established in th corresponding system (unless any exterior cause-for instance, substratum or morphological pressure-influences it), it is possible that it subsists-in some cases about two thousand years-without any more change, and influences or rather restricts the direction of other possible changes which will take place later.
For example,
(1) The accented e and o of Classical Latin changed into ε and c in Vulgar Latin, which, moreover, diphthogized respectively into ie and ue. This means, according to the writer, that in the age of transition from Vulgar Latin to Castilian there appeared a tendency to hate low vowels and prefer the most idealistic vowel system i, e, a, o, u, which hitherto has never changed.
(2) In the same age, another tendency to hate double consonants-this fenomenon we interpret as a part of lenition of intervocalic consonants-and consonant clusters occurred and nowadays the Spaniards keep hating them.
(3) From the era of Vulgar Latin to modern times we note in the Spanish language a tendency to make initial consonants fortes and medial ones lenes.
(4) From the Modern Ages on there was produced a tendency to reject any voiced sibilant phoneme.
On the contrary, we cannot find these semi-permanent phonological characteristics in the /f/:/v/ opposition which seems to us very inconstant and fluctuating.
On the basis of these characteristics (1), (2), (3) and (4), we can speak of the notable phonetic character of Modern Spanish and, to some extent, can predict it's future phonological system.

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This paper is giving the survey of the Russian phonemic analysis from the point of view of the author's so-called functional phonemic analysis. The author distinguishes the three levels of abstraction in phonology. They are (1) the level of functional sounds, (2) the level of functional phones and (3) the level of functional phonemes.

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