One of the European scholars that we have been fortunate enough to attract to this country is Giuliano Bonfante. The great importance of such newcomers for American scholarship is largely based upon the different scholastic traditions that they bring to us. Bonfante, for example, was trained in the Italian school of linguistics—neolinguistica, they call it—which was developed in sharp opposition to the doctrines of the German neogrammarians of the past seventy-five years or so. This neolinguistic method has until recently remained almost entirely unknown on this side of the ocean, and Bonfante's energetic support of it cannot fail to do us good.

La valeur emphatique de l'indo-européen *kwid est attestée par cid dans le Rgveda, par čit̠ de l'Avesta, par čiy du vieux perse, par oὔκι d'Homère et d'Hérodote, par cid en vieil irlandais. La nuance indéfinie de ce petit mot à l'origine, restée visible en présence d'un interrogatif ou dans le cas du redoublement, s'est ailleurs modifiée, passant de ‘en quelque chose’ à ‘un peu’, d'où par litote ‘plutôt, bien sûr, même, en particulier’ (Bartholomae, Ai. Wb. 593 'und zwar'). Dans RV IV.3.4 Macdonell lui attribue un sens atténué, Geldner au contraire met le mot en valeur: tváṃ cin naḥ śámyā (pada śámyai) bodhi... svādhḥ 'merke du wenigstens auf diesen Opferdienst von mir'. Et pour I.10.9 ν̄ cid dadhiṣva me gíraḥ, Macdonell traduit: ‘Even now take to thyself my songs’, là où rien ne légitime le sens de ‘maintenant encore’; mais Geldner écrit: ‘Nimm doch ja meine Lobreden an’.

[In order to let Chaucer's use of Romance vocabulary provide additional evidence of his authorship of The equatorie of the planetis, it is necessary to distinguish between the overall percentage of such words in his writings, and that in works of different length. It is shown that the percentage of Romance words changes significantly with the length of the text, according to the relation

percentage of Romance words = 10 log10 (total words in text)

Using this formula, we calculate the expected percentage of Romance words in the Equatorie, estimated to contain about 6048 words, as 10 logio 6048 = 37.8%. By counting, it is found that Romance words constitute 37% of the vocabulary. The good agreement between theory and observation provides evidence for Chaucer's authorship of the Equatorie.]

Comparison of ten Rhaeto-Romance dialects reveals that, in addition to Western Romance consonant lenition, the phonological innovations which characterize Proto-Rhaeto-Romance as against its source, Proto-Italo-Western, are the following: phonemic vowel length, posttonic syllabic consonants, a phoneme , a fronted /a/, the conditioned split of PItW , and a central rounded vowel series. From these innovations it is clear that the RR dialects are so closely related to French as to make attractive the detailed comparison of the two stocks. In this article it will be assumed that a linguistic stock x, the ancestral form of French and Rhaeto-Romance, became distinct after the beginning of the Christian era, that the six innovations arose in this stock to the exclusion of the rest of the Romance-speaking world, and that the Germanic invasions ultimately broke its unity by driving the two substocks territorially apart and out of communication with each other.

[Greek κάραβοs is not the source of the Slavic word, as is frequently assumed, but is borrowed from it. The Slavic term can be explained as a derivative of IE *qer ‘cut’. It passed also into Latin as carabus. See also the summary at end of the article.]

In the oldest OE texts—the Epinal glossary, the Corpus glossary, and the oldest documents—b is written medially where other Germanic languages have /b/, and f is written where other Germanic languages have /f/; e.g. obær, halbæ, libr, hræbnes, ebor (Ep.), giaban (doc.), uulfes, cefr, hofr. The same distinction is found in final position; e.g. hualb, stæb, reab, uuf (Ep.), gib (doc.). In later OE texts, f is universally used both medially and finally; e.g. lifr, ofer, hræfn, efor, stæf, reaf. Some isolated spellings in Epinal indicated the coming change in spelling practice: unofercumenræ, sifunsterri, nabfogar. Corpus has even more cases, e.g. halfe, forscrifen, as well as reverse spellings like ceber, where b appears for f.

It is generally known that one of Leonard Bloomfield's life works is the descriptive and comparative study of Algonquian. It is also generally conceded that his work in this field is of considerable importance. But most of those who are quite willing to admit this do so on indirect evidence: since Bloomfield's other work proves him a sound scholar, his Algonquian studies must be sound too. Algonquian, after all, is an out-of-the-way language family, and few have concerned themselves with it. In view, particularly, of Bloomfield's endeavors in this field, this neglect is unfortunate. To the writer the following points seem beyond dispute: (1) careful study of Algonquian as Bloomfield has described it can be a fascinating, enlightening, and rewarding experience even for established comparatists and historical linguists; (2) for the newcomer to linguistics, a reading of Bloomfield's Algonquian works is one of the finest indoctrinations into the best of linguistic method.