There has been considerable controversy about the nature and interpretation of the elements written -ch, -nh in standard northern Vietnamese; several recent analyses deny them separate status, equating them with final velars. Comparison with the corresponding finals in other dialects suggests they were originally distinct from velars, and this view is further supported by comparative evidence from the related Muong language. The results of the study have implications for the further comparison of Vietnamese and Muong with other Austroasiatic languages and raise some questions about the part Chinese loanwords have played in the development of these elements.

An analysis of the English personal pronouns is proposed in which they are morphemically segmented into three components—a prefix indicating person, a bound base that is the ‘pronominal base’, and a final component that is either a case suffix or a postfix of gender. The material is presented in the form of phonemes, morphophones, and morphemes; certain theoretical considerations of morphophonic structure are suggested but not elaborated.