PIE intervocalic *w is preserved in the Primitive Irish of the earliest Ogam inscriptions, but is lost by the time of the Old Irish sources. The details of the loss are described here, with special attention to cases of interaction with the processes of vowel loss. It is shown that a number of problems can be resolved by the assumption that *w before *e and *i was palatalized to [w'], with subsequent unrounding to [i].

The material of Linguistic Science is human utterance, and for its work the ideal medium is viva voce communication. Rather, this would be the case, did not factors of time and space greatly restrict its applicability. Human utterance is so fleeting that even the field-worker placed most fortunately as he is in the immediate presence of his material, must seek to hold this transitory phenomenon—to make an artificial record of it for re-examination.

The studies of Gilliéron and his followers in linguistic geography have made us familiar with the doctrine that two words of different origin which become homonyms by regular sound-changes may interfere with one another to such an extent that one is ultimately excluded from the vocabulary of a given dialect. The lack of a linguistic atlas of England has prevented the application of this principle, and likewise of others expounded by Gilliéron, to English dialects. For it was the comparison of maps which enabled Gilliéron and Roques to show, for example, that only in those French dialects where mulgere would have become homonymous with molere, is it replaced by other words for ‘milk’, such as tirer, traire, ajuster, aria, blechi, etc. Although neat demonstration of this sort is seldom possible in English, conclusions about the conflict of homonyms may sometimes be reached, in the absence of an atlas, by more roundabout methods. Enough information for reasonable deductions may be obtained from the combined materials of the English Dialect Dictionary, which gives the distribution of a large part of the vocabulary in modern dialects, and the New English Dictionary, which gives a detailed semantic history and the approximate time of a word's disappearance from the language.

Professor Collinson's study of Indication is the third installment of a series of language studies entitled Foundations of Language, logical and psychological, an approach to the international language problem. That series is, in its turn, part of a more inclusive program of linguistic investigations, a further part of which comprises a series of Comparative Studies of certain ethnic and constructed languages.

Tense and aspect markers in Japanese relative clauses contrast with each other in unique ways not observed in matrix sentences. Different kinds of semantic contrasts appear under particular conditions, depending on whether the relative clause and matrix sentence verbal phrases represent actions vs. states, or are habitual vs. non-habitual. When verbal phrases of both the relative clause and the matrix sentence name non-habitual past actions, the occurrence of relative-clause-final -ta, -te iru, and -te ita can be explained in terms of the opposition simultaneous vs. non-simultaneous. Comparison of examples with verbal phrases of stative non-habitual matrix sentences leads to the formulation of a ‘principle of convergence’, which is later extended to other cases. When the verbal phrase of a relative clause designates a habitual past action, relative-clause-final verbal forms in -ru, -ta, and -te ita all occur, but these forms connote varying degrees of randomness, two of which are contrasted in detail as the ‘true habitual’ vs. ‘iterative’ usage.

Two theories are held concerning the phonetic nature of the laryngeal phonemes. Ferdinand de Saussure originally conceived of the hypothetical phonemes, later partially identified with the laryngeals of Hittite, as sonants. He regarded the long vowels of heavy bases as the result of earlier diphthongs or of full-grade vowel plus consonantal allophone of one of these sonants plus a consonant. PIE he considered to be the vocalic allophone of the sonant standing between consonants in zero grade of the root. Saussure also derived the ‘long vocalic sonants’ of Proto-Indo-European by a development parallel to that which produced the long full-grade vowels. His view that what we now call laryngeals were phonemes having both vocalic and consonantal variants was on the whole retained by Albert Cuny, Walter Couvreur, and Holger Pedersen, although the number of laryngeals and the details concerning their development varied from scholar to scholar.

In Ulfilas' translation of the New Testament, γονυπϵτ in Mark 10.17 is translated knussjands, and again in Mark 1.40 kniwam knussjands. Since the beginning of research in Germanic linguistics neither the meaning of knussjan nor its etymology has been satisfactorily determined. This article is an attempt to establish both, and also to classify several groups of words in the Germanic dialects which from time to time have been wrongly associated both with Goth. knussjan and with one another.

Linguistic relationships in Northern Asia have been the subject of speculation and controversy for many years. This paper attempts to provide evidence to help prove the relationship of Korean to Japanese; peripheral attention is paid to the other languages spoken across the vast territory that stretches from the Bosporus to Kamchatka. The relationship of the Altaic group of languages—the three families called Turkic, Tungusic (or Tungus-Manchu), and Mongolian—is widely accepted today, although the evidence has not been marshalled as convincingly as some of us might wish. ‘Hyperborean’ or ‘Paleosiberian’ is a term of convenience to refer to some Siberian languages of undetermined lineage; these include the Chukotan group (Chukchi or Luoravetlan, Koryak or Nymylan, and near-extinct Kamchadal), Ainu, and Gilyak (or Nivkh). In addition to Korean (K), Middle Korean (MK), Japanese (J), and Old Japanese (OJ), forms are cited in this paper from Turkish (Tk.); Lamut (L), a Tungusic language also called Even; Dagur (D) Mongolian, as well as Khalkha (the standard language of Outer Mongolia); Ainu (A); and Gilyak (G). There are a very few citations from Kamchadal and Koryak, and an occasional item from Hungarian or Finnish as representatives of the Uralic family, which some scholars believe related to the Altaic languages in a Ural-Altaic family or ‘superstock’. The obvious close relationship of the languages of the Ryukyu Islands to standard Japanese has been well established for years, and by proto-Japanese I refer to the ancestor of both Ryukyu and ‘Main Islands’ Japanese, assuming that it was the speech of the people of what is called (after the name of an archeological site) the Yayoi culture, thought to be responsible for bringing rice farming to the islands about two thousand years ago.

The history of science records many illustrations of the human inclination to cling to a neat generalization regardless of the evidence behind it. Within our own field we may mention the classification of languages as inflected, agglutinating, or isolating; and the obviously false dogma that phonetic laws operate without exception.

Some linguists, it is said, believe in the existence of a uniform Proto-Indo-European, others do not. From two reviews of earlier writings of mine, it would appear that I hold both views simultaneously; but I do not. I should not be reluctant to admit that I have, between the earlier and the later publication in question, changed my mind; but I have not.

I am grateful to Professor Bloomfield who, by printing in its entirety my discussion of his principles, has, in accord with the wise and noble policy of Frederick the Great ('niederhängen!'), thereby given my remarks currency among the readers of this journal. But I am disappointed that he contents himself with brushing them aside as 'tertiary responses' or, as I would express it, 'linguistic folklore' (of course, they are folklore only provided Mr. Bloomfield's way of thinking is the truly scientific one—and, conversely, his remarks are linguistic folklore if mine is scientific), and that he does not answer the two main questions I raised: 1. how he can, as a mechanist, be willing to use the terms basic in our linguistics ‘Indo-European’, ‘Vulgar Latin’, ‘Proto-Romance’ etc., which are of mentalistic and even speculative origin; 2. why a stylistic study such as I am in the habit of undertaking, should be any more daring than is the reconstruction of Proto-Romance.