In classical Old Irish the enclitic emphasizing pronoun of the third singular masculine and occasionally neuter as well as of the plural in all genders is som. Towards the end of the period, this is sometimes spelled sum or sam. Very rarely do sem or sium occur after palatal consonants. Though the vowel may vary, the final letter is almost always m. So far, only two exceptions have been noted and both are found in sentences written in the margin of the Würzburg Glosses by the main hand which may be approximately ascribed to the middle of the eighth century about fifty years later than the prima manus. In the one instance, Wb.9b7 reads a thindnacul sa 'his being delivered up', for which the editors of the Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus suggest the correction a tindnacul sa or a thindnacul som, the second emendation being supported by á anim som ‘his soul’ in the same gloss. In the other instance, Wb.9b17 reads a mbésa sa 'their customs', where instead of sa one again expects som.

This study proposes to examine the phonetic ongm of the Latin diminutive suffixes in -ellus -a -um and -illus -a -um, and to trace the lines of their analogical extension as independent formative elements, a phenomenon which is later than the origin of -ello/ā and -illo/ā- through phonetic processes. Since scholars have expressed several opinions on the phonetic origin of these suffixes, it is perhaps justifiable to examine the validity of the view most commonly held, by adducing all the extant pertinent materials, inasmuch as no such detailed presentation has yet, to my knowledge, been made. Moreover, little or no consideration has been given to the problem of the extension of the suffixes -ello/ā- and -illo/ā- from words or groups of words where their development was phonetic, and of the possible points of departure of this extension.

The present paper is not a programmatic statement, offering a theoretical base for the analysis of style, but the application of descriptive techniques to some aspects of style in a particular language, Persian. Linguists have generally been accustomed to restricting their analyses to a given style; this has been useful in presenting a consistent and coherent picture. The introduction of a stylistic frame of reference will enable us to deal more fully with each language, and, in my opinion, to present an even more consistent and coherent picture by defining what were previously called ‘free variants’.

The origin and development of speech habits in individuals, through their life cycles from birth to death, can appropriately be termed linguistic ontogeny. In contrast to this, the subject matter of historical linguistics—changes through decades and centuries in the speech patterns of communities—is of course linguistic phylogeny. The present paper deals with certain relations between these two: specifically, with the mechanisms whereby continuity of linguistic tradition is maintained in a community in the face of the constant turnover of population through birth and death, immigration and emigration. Jespersen has discussed this problem, and has connected it with historical linguistics by asking what relation there may be between these mechanisms and the fact that languages change in the course of time. But Jespersen, as is well known, did not accept the assumption that phonetic change is regular.