This study reports an experiment concerning the spontaneous responses of young children to commands differing in structural format and semantic content. The results indicate that syntactic comprehension exceeds production in ‘telegraphic’ speakers. Based on these results, conjectures are offered about the techniques which a child might use in coping with his linguistic environment.

Richard Bentley has won only blame for wishing to change a 29 from μνσατο yp κατ ϑυμόν μὐμονο A to μνσατο yp κατ νουCν νομονο A; whereas his plan of writing the digamma into the Homeric text is still cited as one of his claims to fame. Yet in both cases he did much the same thing: he was unable to see why the traditional text was as it was, he was unwilling to grant a simple lack of understanding on his own part, and so he changed the text. Had he known Homer better, however, or known more about other early poetries, he would have seen that the unreasoned use of the fixed epithet is so common that we must explain it, not try to do away with it. First, the analysis of Homer's diction might have shown him that the poet had, to help him in his verse-making, many fixed phrases in which there was an epithet, and that he used these phrases so often that he forgot to think about the meaning of the epithets in them. Or second, the study of oral poetries might have shown him that the use of the fixed epithet is common there, and this would have led him on to the cause of metrical usefulness. It is the same for the digamma. Had Bentley, or any of all those scholars who have corrected Homer or printed the digamma in their editions been willing to grant that there might be some force acting on the Homeric language which they did not see, they would not have fought so fiercely against the stubborn text. But they had seen a part of the truth, and they were beguiled by the complexity of what they had seen. Yet a fuller knowledge of Homer's poetry and of oral poetry shows us why Homer's language has traces of the digamma, but not the digamma itself.

A. L. Kroeber has contributed to Hokan studies to an extent not usually recognized by nonspecialists. Together with Dixon, he first discovered the genetic relationships of the group, then consisting of Karok, Chimariko, Shastan (including Palaihnihan), Pomo, Yana, Esselen, and Yuman. He later added Seri, Tequistlatec (cf. Kroeber), and (with Dixon 1919) Washo. Kroeber has also contributed important fieldwork: Sapir's early comparative work leans exclusively on Kroeber's data for Chontal, Chumash, Salinan, and Esselen, and heavily on Kroeber's data for Yuman, Pomo, Karok, Shasta, Achumawi, and Atsugewi. Kroeber and other Hokanists have long noted the paucity of data from Achumawi and Atsugewi; the present paper is a result of field work undertaken at his suggestion.

The word trík is a modern loanword in Greek, of uncertain date though probably not older than the beginning of this century. According to the definition in the Mega lexikon tēs hellēnikës glōssēs of D. Dēmētrakos (Vol. 9; Athens, 1951), this is a word of the spoken language which means ‘device, deceptive manner, artful strategem’; in short, it has some of the meanings of the English word trick. Since the last war, however, trík has been used in another sense which is fairly remote from the range of meanings just given and, as far as I know, has not yet been recorded in the dictionaries. It is employed colloquially to denote a small slip of paper bearing a printed slogan or short text suitable for distribution in the course of parades or political demonstrations. The question arises whether this word is identical with the trik just mentioned or is another word entirely.