This paper begins with a question. It gives empirical data in order to show that the question appears answerable in principle. It discusses some problems that require an elaboration of the preliminary solution. Finally, it summarizes a few of the implications of the study.

[An argument to show that πoι is in ablaut relation to and its cognates.]

This paper investigates several Avestan words alleged to continue the reflex of Indo-European *ə as i (ī) between consonants in non-initial syllables. A critical analysis of the forms shows that such an interpretation is unjustified.

A generation or two ago the writers of handbooks of Indo-European comparative grammar were for the most part considerably more definite in their conclusions regarding the form of the parent speech than their successors are today. This is particularly true with regard to the verbal system. In those days the repertoire of verb categories was based largely on the agreements between Greek and Sanskrit, some of which were indeed striking, and the deviations of the other Indo-European languages were explained as developing out of that skeletal system, or as innovations, or were left without explanation.

In my last chapter I showed that the relation between participle and noun that grammarians have used as the defining characteristic of the ab urbe condita construction is to be found in other uses of the participle as well. This relation I called ‘complementary’. Finding no criterion, either of meaning or of function, that would distinguish the ab urbe condita examples as a group from other complementary participles, I decided that the best procedure would be to list them according to the grammatical function that each performs in its sentence. Arranging them in this way would, I felt, best bring out the mutual similarities and differences that they show and might perhaps throw new light on the complementary participles as a class.

In Neue Jahrb. 43. 385 ff. (1919) L. Deubner revives the idea that the word paean is originally an apotropaic cry for help, without particular verbal signification and derived from Cretan magic. It develops, he maintains, from the wild leap of the Cretan medicineman into the song of Apollo; and, comparing the word with ejaculations such as λ∈λ and λαλαi he includes also the refrain of the marriage hymn In the course of a long discussion of the paean he dismisses among other ‘Irrlichter’ the derivation of the word proposed by me in 1911 at a meeting of the American Philological Association, and afterward published in the Classical Review. Most of my arguments are summed up by Deubner in an ‘etc’. I have discussed the matter further in Troy and Paeonia (New York, 1925) and as I had not read Deubner's article at the time of my last writing on the subject, I should like now to consider some of his statements which appear to me wrong or misleading, and to strengthen by a new emphasis my suggested derivation for paean.

In 1948, Y. R. Chao suggested that the voiced velar fricative of Mandarin might be regarded as an initial; but since he found that there was little chance of minimal contrasts, we might, for practical purposes, leave this phoneme unmarked. In the present paper I intend to list additional examples of contrast involving this initial, and to comment on its patterning with other initials.

In attempting to establish beyond a doubt the existence of the case of comparison as a comparatively frequent and idiomatic locution in Old English, I am fully aware of the not uncommon tendency of the special investigator to color the context of a given passage to conform to a favorable interpretation. This is often an unconscious habit and perhaps excusable in one who must by close examination at all times seek to discover the subtle relationships that bind the elements of thought together. I have found upon careful examination that I had fallen into such a danger many times where grammatically the case might stand in two or more relationships and where the general meaning was not especially clear. I have avoided such passages whenever I could bring semantics to the aid of syntax, but, on the other hand, I hope I have not failed to record any occurrence in which both syntax and semantics pointed to the comparative relationship.