In the summer of 1938, at the Linguistic Institute in Ann Arbor, Sturtevant gave a public lecture on his Indo-Hittite hypothesis, which was then very much in the foreground of discussion. The next year, C. C. Fries, as Director of the Institute, persuaded Sturtevant to allow the lecture to be printed in the announcement and course program for the Institute of 1939, as the first (and, as it turned out, the last) of what Fries hoped might be a regular feature of such programs.

The lecture, in its published form, had a limited circulation. At the time and for a little while thereafter, Fries received a number of requests for copies. But the publication remained largely unknown, and in particular seems never to have reached European scholars. For this reason, Fries has now suggested that the lecture be reprinted in Language, so that it may at last enjoy the wider circulation which it deserves as the most concise defense of his hypothesis that Sturtevant ever put together.

The article is reprinted here verbatim from the course program of the 1939 Linguistic Institute, except that the bibliographical references in the footnotes have been changed to the form customary in Language.—The Editor.

It is a well known fact that the nominal system of Proto-Indo-European (as well as the pronominal and verbal systems) has to be reconstructed with three numeri—singular, plural, and dual. In many of the Indo-European languages the dual has disappeared as an independent formal category, so that the old threefold contrast is found to be replaced by a binary one.

Among the types of weak verbs occurring in Germanic, none has provoked more difference of opinion than that of Class III, and no other has so consistently eluded a believable analysis. As might be expected, most discussions of the subject lean heavily on the evidence provided by Gothic. In Gothic weak verbs of Class III, the most noticeable feature is the occurrence of a in some inflectional forms beside ai in others. Thus the present indicative active of the verb ‘have’ has sg. 1 hab-a but 2 hab-ais and 3 hab-aiþ, pl. 1 hab-am and 3 hab-and but 2 hab-aiþ. Similarly, the imperative has sg. 2 hab-ai and pl. 2 -aiþ but pl. 3 -andau. On the other hand, a always appears in the infinitive (haban), in the present participle (habands), and throughout the passive indicative (e.g. pl. 1–3 habanda). Conversely, ai occurs in all forms of the preterit (e.g. ind. sg. 1 habaida, p.p. habaiþs) and in nearly all optative forms, the sole exception being pres. act. 1 habau.

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.

Questions can be expressed in the Ethiopian languages in either an affirmative or a negative way, as is the case in other languages. In answer to an affirmative question ('Will you come tomorrow?'), the particle is 'yes' for an affirmative statement, and ‘no’ for a negative statement. The verb of the question is most often repeated either in the affirmative ('Yes, I will come') or in the negative ('No, I will not come'). In answer to a negative question ('Will you not come tomorrow?'), the Ethiopian languages have various ways of expressing the affirmative or the negative. The object of the present study is to illustrate the various ways of expressing 'yes' or ‘no’ as an answer to a negative question. The investigation was made with the help of informants in Amharic, Tigrinya, Harari, and Chaha and Soddo of the Gurage group.