An essential part of Bloomfield's definition of linguistic forms and constructions is the attachment to them of stimulus-reaction features, which are his definition of meaning. The linguistic scholar is still bedeviled by the many problems involved in talking about meaning, and he still lacks a body of dogma to which he can refer when meaning is talked about. This paper is an attempt to explore one of the problems and to establish a postulate which may be added to Bloomfield's Set of Postulates.

[Examples of the present progressive having minimal contrast with the simple present make ‘base tense’ or ‘fact of process’ a better description of the simple present than ‘constitution of things’, the latter being, however, the most important corollary.]

[The Proto-Tocharian imperfect, based on IE optative formations, is preserved in Kuchean (Toch. B) but lost in Turfanian (Toch. A) except for two relics, the imperfects of the verbs ‘be’ and ‘go’. The remaining Turfanian imperfects are in origin identical with preterit formations found in Turfanian or in Kuchean or in both, which are all derived from IE perfects and aorists.]

Grammarians tend to be occupied primarily with the establishment and description of allowed patterns and with the rejection of whatever falls outside these. Some way of looking at language in which a distinction is made between grammar and lexis seems to be necessary if the patternings are to be economically stated or defined. For there is a difference between speaking about the eligibility of a particular class of unit in some place or places in the grammatical structure of a language and about the eligibility of exponents of that class of unit in such a place or places in a particular sentence. And we can only preserve the simplicity of our grammatical description if we are prepared from the start to let it be understood that there are lexical factors, factors of collocational eligibility, which (in different ways to be considered later) tend to rule out of actual use a large number of ‘sentences’ (and smaller units) even though these seem to conform to all the rules of grammatical pattern. Grammarians do not, generally speaking, much concern themselves with the rejection of such ‘sentences’ as these, for whatever shortcomings they may have are considered to be grammatically irrelevant and more a matter for the lexicologist. There are of course marginal cases in the judgment of which the grammarian may feel doubtful whether he has or has not a claim to be involved; this is a difficult matter, to which I call attention but which I do not care to pursue.

[An examination of four English manuscripts of the tenth century (Vercelli Book, Exeter Book, Junius Codex and Beowulf Codex) shows that a distinct tendency to level the vowels of final unstressed syllables already existed in the second half of the tenth century. The beginning of the Middle English period, then, must be put at A. D. 1000 or thereabouts.]