Linguistics, language acquisition, and language variation: Current ...

According to tradition, King Arthur devised the round table so that, when his knights were seated around it, none of them could claim precedence over the others. This has always seemed tome to provide an excellent precedent for those who have found their happiness levels circumscribed because they are unable to determine priorities among levels of linguistic representation. There is something intuitively satisfying about circles, and I have always found it helpful to work with a circular model in which different levels of language rest side by side, with none constituting a beginning or end, and all patently equal. I am very comfortable with this-apart from one thing: that the segments of the circle which identify each level all narrow inexorably towards a single, shared central point.