The following investigation presents a constructional procedure segmenting an utterance in a way which correlates well with word and morpheme boundaries. The procedure requires a large set of utterances, elicited in a certain manner from an informant (or found in a very large corpus); and it requires that all the utterances be written in the same phonemic representation, determined without reference to morphemes. It then investigates a particular distributional relation among the phonemes in the utterances thus collected; and on the basis of this relation among the phonemes, it indicates particular points of segmentation within one utterance at a time. For example, in the utterance /hiyzkwikər/ He's quicker it will indicate segmentation at the points marked by dots: /hiy.z.kwik.ər/; and it will do so purely by comparing this phonemic sequence with the phonemic sequences of other utterances.

The village of Tetelcingo is six kilometers north of Cuautla, Morelos, on the highway to Mexico City.

My wife and children and I lived in Tetelcingo for the better part of the years from 1940 to 47 and during several short periods since. We were shown no little kindness by the inhabitants of this village and learned from them their mother tongue—Māsiewalli.

It is a matter of frequent occurrence that words etymologically identical appear in varying forms in a given language. The pairs person: parson, royal : regal, shirt: skirt are familiar examples in English. In the first and third there is a clear difference of meaning, while in the second the distinction is rather one of style. The source of these doublets is different in each case. In the first a sound-change which has resulted in the modern standard English pronunciation of clerk, Berkeley, Hertford affected likewise person. But the change was not completed. The changed form, now written parson, has been retained only for the incumbent of a parish, while the common form person serves the other meanings. In the second we have an instance of learned borrowing, while the third presents Scandinavian and English forms side by side, with a notable differentiation of meaning. The first of these three types is of peculiar interest, for the language, in such cases, has added to its vocabulary from within its own resources, not by means of suffix or composition, but out of the working of phonology. It is as though the speakers saw an opportunity, and availed themselves of it.

Until recently I had taken symmetry in phonemic analysis as something axiomatic and self-evident, needing no discussion. But in 1960 two well-known structuralists found fault with my patterning of the phonemes of Icelandic: on the one hand, the Russian phonologist M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij accused me of doing violence to phonetic fact in order to achieve symmetry; on the other, the American phonemicist A. A. Hill accused me of needlessly taking phonetic facts in a way destructive of symmetrical patterning. According to my Russian critic I am set on symmetry at all costs; according to my American critic, ‘it is clear that for Malone a phonetic “fact” must clearly outweigh any possible symmetry of arrangement’ (249). Confronted with these opposing criticisms of my procedure, I can no longer let symmetry take care of itself; I am forced to weigh its worth in the patterning of phonemes. Hence this paper.

[The so-called passive of videō is in reality an old middle, corresponding to Homeric ∊ἴδ∊ται, ἰδέσθαι and meaning from prehistoric times ‘seem, appear’. The meaning ‘be seen’ is late, secondary, and very rare. This view, besides being in consonance with the evidence of other IE languages having verbs derived from the base *weid-, is confirmed by the occurrence in early Latin of a deponent form of videō (Curculio 260–1; Epidicus 61–2). The middle verb vidērī therefore illustrates and supports the writer's theory (AJP 48.157–75) that ‘the Latin passive is essentially a middle voice’.]

[This is intended as the first of a series of detailed discussions of the so-called Tocharian palatalization. All that is attempted here is an examination of the actual appearance of the sound change, to determine what are the original and what are the secondary consonants.]

It is an honor to be invited to contribute to a number of Language dedicated to Franklin Edgerton, and it is a pleasure for me to accept the invitation. For that purpose I have selected three notes dealing with the language of the Iliad, which are held together by the fact that all three end with problems of the sort that Edgerton has dealt with so successfully in his reconstruction of the Panchatantra and in his edition of the Sabhāparvan of the Mahābhārata—problems of textual criticism.

By the courtesy of Prof. J. H. Breasted, head of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, the Illustrated London News for April 8, 1933, has a page of illustrations in color, representing recent finds of the Institute's expedition at Persepolis, under the field-directorship of Dr. Ernst Herzfeld. Among them is an Old Persian cuneiform inscription of Xerxes, on colored enameled bricks, forming a plaque to ornament a wall of the royal palace; in this function it is identical with the inscription on similar enameled bricks, found by Scheil at Susa and published by him as No. 12 of his Inscriptions des Achéménides à Suse (cf. my comments in JAOS 51.218-21 and 53.2-3), which formed a frieze about the great hall of Darius's palace at that place.

Some of Pāṇini's rules contain negative compounds. In such cases there is ambiguity; the negative can be construed with the nominal following it in the compound, or it can be construed with a verb. According to the Mahābhāṣya, the first interpretation yields a positive rule providing an operation in a domain specified by the negative compound: non-x. The second interpretation yields a negative rule providing for the cancellation of an operation already provided for. Again, the first interpretation yields a one-step operation, while the second interpretation requires that two sentences be understood, providing two steps: tentative application of an operation and its subsequent cancellation. Both interpretations involve negation (pratiṣedha); the first type is called paryudāsa (pratiṣedha) 'limitation(al negation)', the second type prasajyapratiṣedha 'negation (subsequent to tentatively) applying'. The conclusions derived from the Mahābhāṣya are used to judge some formulations in the Kāśikā. In addition, it is shown that, while Patañjali usually demonstrates that both interpretations of an ambiguous negative compound will yield desired results, later commentators decide in favor of one or the other interpretation on the basis of economy. Finally, it is shown that the rules usually considered by Western scholars do not lend themselves to a clear understanding of the essential difference between paryudāsa and prasajyapratiṣedha.

[Reexamination of the problem of taboo on animal names, with special reference to the IE names for the bear. Addition of the Dravidian words for ‘tiger’. The hypothesis of mere avoidance of animal names by hunters does not explain; it is probable that in almost all cases a religious attitude is to be looked for.]