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Friday, 11 July 2025, 7:45 PM
Site: The Virtual Linguistics Campus (OER)
Course: VLC001 - Demo Course (VLC001)
Glossary: Demo Glossary
L

Linear Ordering - Parameter Settings for PDE

Specifier Specifier on left, head on right:
XP ⇨ (Spec) X'
e.g. [very] pretty, [some] authors
Adjunct Both options allowed:
(X' ⇨ X' YP) and (X' ⇨ YP X')
e.g. [black] cars, students [from London]
Complement Head on left, complement on right:
X' ⇨ X (ZP)
e.g. books [of poems], Paul saw [his friend].

Heads are in boldface, modifiers appear between square brackets [ ].



Low Back Merger

In Canadian and many regional variants in Northeast America, the phonemes /o/ and /oh/ have merged, so that cot and caught, Don and dawn, hock and hawk, collar and caller, are all homophones.

This 'cot-caught merger' is complete in Canada, the West, Western Pennsylvania and Eastern New England.