[Goth, l- is to be regarded as the product of an assimilation of fl- > -. By this we obtain wanting etymologies for words like Goth.liuhan etc.]

When the utterances of a language have been analyzed into their smallest meaningful units, the morphemes, a number of these morphemes in most languages have more than one morpheme alternant. Insofar as these alternants are sequences of phonemes (in which case we call them morphs), the phonemic differences among all the different morphs belonging to one phoneme can be described, classified, and compared with the differences among morphs of other morphemes, considered morpheme by morpheme. The total class of these differences so described, classified, and compared is called the morphophonemics of the language in question, and any two morphs of the same morpheme are said to stand in a relation of (morphophonemic) alternation with each other. The most common symbol for alternation is ~. Alternations may be reduced to their lowest phonemic terms; thus (Bloch 416, Type VIII) the alternation duw ~ di (do ~ di-d) may be reduced to uw ~ i. Sometimes, as in this example, the reduction can be effected in more than one way; we could reduce the alternation to two phonemic alternations: u ~ i and w ~ zero (cf. Bloch 414, par. 3). In this case, and perhaps always, the difference between alternative ways is trivial.

AÐELMOD ‘noble-minded, virtuous’. This compound appears not to be recorded in OE, and occurs only once in the Brut:-

Linguists have discussed the question whether certain of the Bantu languages employ consonant clusters, or whether all the syllables of those languages are of the pattern (C)V, with some of the consonants being phonetically complex. In order to have a neutral term which favors neither interpretation, I shall use Hockett's word onset to cover any and all consonantal material which precedes the vowel of a syllable.

In the series bum, bun, bung, the final /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ are distinguished by oral closure respectively at the lips, at the alveolar ridge, and at the soft palate. When these words are spoken in isolation, the three final consonants share the features of open nasal cavity, voice, and a gradual decrescendo to silence. With these observations in mind, consider the three words bump, bunt, bunk. In these words the final stops are phonetically released or unreleased, in free variation. What is of interest here is the precise articulatory nature of the unreleased allophones and the preceding nasals. The articulatory formation of the nasals is as in bum, bun, bung. But there is no gradual decrescendo to silence: speech is terminated by an abrupt cessation of voice and an abrupt closure of the nasal cavity by an upward movement of the velum. It is evident that in these articulations the closure of the velum cannot be heard as such. The only acoustic and auditory cue for final /p/,/t/,/k/ in the pronunciations described is the abrupt ending of the preceding nasal. If we adopt the letter [I] for this sudden interruption of a nasal, the following symbolism can be interpreted either auditorily or acoustically: [m] + [I] = /mp/, [n] + [I] = /nt/, [ŋ] + [I] = /ŋk/.

The Hitt. suffix -tar gen. -nnas appended to verb stems forms action nouns. Examples are a-ša-tar dat. a-ša-an-na beside e-eš-zi ‘sets’ pl. a-ša-an-zi midd. e-ša e-ša-ri (with reflexive -za) ‘seats himself’ pl. e-ša-an-da e-ša-an-ta-ri, and ú-wa-tar dat. ú-wa-an-na beside a-uš-zi ‘sees’ pl. ú-wa-an-zi midd. u-wa-it-ta u-wa-it-ta-ri ‘appears’. Benveniste has pointed out the etymology of the suffix; it is identical with a hitherto unrecognized IE suffix -ter -tnos. One difficulty remains to be cleared up; and some additional material on the IE side can be supplied. Hence the present paper.