[The basic meaning of the simple present tense is the constitution of things, logical, physical, psychological, essential, etc.; of the present progressive, mere occurrence. The distinction between them is not a time-distinction.]

In a previous article (Language 7.194-9) U. T. Holmes sought to establish the probability of German influence on the syntax of late Latin as spoken in northern Gaul. He also suggested a method for determining those Germanic constructions which differed most from popular Latin; and, where these German constructions are present in OFrench syntax he assumed that an interconnection was quite possible. Willem L. Graff has observed recently that ‘it is not yet possible to formulate the general laws that are thought to rule the drift of syntactical features.’ This may be true, in part, but it is safe to argue that every language has inherent tendencies which work themselves through to an expected conclusion, once the restrictions of artificial grammar become lax. It is possible to foresee much of late vulgar Latin in primitive and early Latin. The drift is continuous—no radical departures of syntactical construction are apt to develop without a rude shock from without, and, as was argued on good authority in the earlier article, the most vigorous shock which Gallo-Latin had to bear was from the horde of Germanic speakers who eventually took political possession of northern France. Furthermore, whatever we may say of the phonology and spelling of Saint Jerome's Vulgate Bible, its syntax (particularly before the revision by Alcuin) shows the popular concept of the phrase and sentence as held in the fourth century A.D. By confronting the Vulgate text with painfully literal translations made from it into OHG it is not difficult to discover those Germanisms which were essentially different from the late Latin drift. At the same time no construction must be labelled Germanic, even by this careful comparison, until a check has established that it is not present, or only slightly so, in the other Romance tongues. Italian and Provençal suffered less Germanic influence than French; Spanish had still less, and Roumanian almost none at all.

On the basis of Varro's etymology ‘uncia ab uno’ (LL 5.171), it has been said that Lat. uncia ‘ of anything, esp. as a weight ( of a pound) and monetary unit ( of an as)‘ represents an earlier *oiniciā. There are two possibilities of development: *oiniciā > *ōnciā > *ŏnciā > uncia, or *oiniciā > *ūnciā > uncia. The first requires a change known only in nōn < noenum (provided this etymology of nōn is accepted) and three regular changes—syncope, shortening of a long vowel before nasal plus consonant, and ŏ > ŭ before /η/. The second is not debatable, for oi > ū and shortening of the long vowel are both regular; given the etymon, therefore, it is the preferable development.

[It is well established that some assibilation of Germanic k occurred in Northumbrian as in other dialects of English, but the extent to which non-initial k was affected has remained open to question. A study of the complete place-name material indicates that in the north of England k was retained as a stop in final position. In the county of Northumberland only, medial k was assibilated before i/j, and in the sequence -ik- + palatal vowel; elsewhere in the North medial k was in all situations retained as a stop.]

[Skt. milati ‘to unite with’ intr., only Classical, is a Middle Indic form of *miśláte ‘to be mixed’, a variant of miśrayati ‘to mix’. The Middle Indic change mh > bh. Skt. -bhālayate ‘to perceive’, Middle Indic form of *smārayate. Panj. mijjh ‘marrow’ (aspirated) = Germanic *mazg- etc.]

The following discussion grew out of my attempt to fulfill a request from the Editor of Language to review the late R. H. Stetson's Motor phonetics: A study of speech movements in action, 2d edition (pp. xi, 212, with 122 figures in the text; Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company [for Oberlin College], 1951), hereafter referred to as Mot. Phon. The routine reviewing procedures did not work out. Much of Stetson's material seemed unlikely to interest readers of Language; many matters which might interest them, and which Stetson's topic might seem to bear on, are either not discussed at all or are only obliquely hinted at in Mot. Phon. Further, Stetson's expository style, with its idiosyncratic terminology, its peculiar structure of repetitions and unsignaled transitions, its unlabeled analogies, its mixture of polemic and report, requires a paraphrase before discussion.