This paper presents positive evidence for a genetic relation between Dravidian and Uralian. The major evidence consists of systematic phonemic correspondences between 153 Proto-Dravidian and Proto-Uralian lexical items. Impressionistic structural resemblances support the lexical evidence.

[Etymologies are offered for: aduggere ‘to irritate, anger’; Sien, asciunare ‘to gather’ and dialectal cognates; attraccare ‘to draw a boat to shore’; bifolco ‘cow-herd’; coccolarsi ‘to squat; to enjoy oneself’; dunque ‘therefore’; elce ‘holm-oak’; incignare ‘to begin’; infolcarsi ‘to interfere, meddle’; ischio ‘oak’; lazzo ‘(stage) trick, gag’; mucca ‘milch-cow’; pozzanghera ‘mud-puddle’; uggio ‘disgust’; also for Span, mozo, muchacho, Port, moço ‘boy’.

These etymologies are divided into two groups: those involving contamination or the like, and simple etymologies.]

[In Venetic inscription no. 249, Ethnographic Museum of Vienna, the r in the second line goes with tola in the first and tolar is a verb, third singular present middle, and not a noun. It belongs with OIr. canar and has an indicative and personal meaning ‘he dedicates’. canar means in the Old Irish glosses ‘is sung’, not ‘there shall be singing’. The comparison of Old Irish, Latin, Oscan (fufans), Venetic, Greek (ἔτλᾱν), Lithuanian, Old Ch. Slav., and perhaps Tocharian, indicates that this ā-formation in PIE was essentially indicative. Its ‘injunctive’ value is simply a modal use of the indicative.]

Heretofore, in etymological investigations, in the Indo-European field at least, several processes have been overworked, being used to explain quite too many instances of irregularity. These include the following: (1) ablaut variation within the permissible grades, but without any indication of the reason for the variation; (2) cognation with words found in remote branches of the Indo-European family, but without any near congeners; (3) special phonetic laws, set up to explain some two or three examples, and so narrowly defined that they can apply to very few examples.

[Greek ἐννἐα and Latin quattuor have proved difficult to explain. After an examination of the explanations offered hitherto, the theory is advanced that the -vv- and -tt- of these words are instances of lengthening caused by the analogy of other numbers used in series with them.]

In Lehmann's recent article on the Proto-Indo-European resonants in Germanic (Lg. 31.355–66), he adduces some evidence pointing to the retention, in Germanic, of the allophonic distribution posited for liquids and nasals in Proto-Indo-European (§4.1, §4.3). In this connection he discusses certain metrical features which require that the nasals, in some cases, be considered syllabic. In addition, some forms containing nasals are discussed in terms of strictly structural criteria. Involved are the graphs um, un (ul, ur), these being the Germanic reflexes of the Indo-European syllabic resonants. It is commonly considered that the u, in these cases, developed as a prop-vowel when the nasal or liquid (in zero grade) no longer functioned as a syllabic. It is further usually considered that by the time of the earliest Germanic texts this u, originally automatic in the neighborhood of nasals and liquids (in zero grade), had become phonemic, merging with the reflex of IE u.

Most linguists agree on the existence, or at least on the inescapable utility, of two kinds of basic elements in a language: morphemes and phonemes. The relation between them, however, is conceived of in various ways. In this paper we survey some of these ways, and then extend the discussion to some other aspects of language design and of linguistic method and theory.