As basic as the phonemic principle is to linguistic science, it is only quite recently that it has had the serious attention of linguists. In studying the phonemes of Chitimacha (an Indian language of Louisiana) I knew of no single source from which I could learn to understand all the phenomena that I observed. There seemed to be a need for an adequate and complete exposition of the phonemic principle including, especially, an account of how it applies to the more marginal and difficult types of phenomena. I at first intended to include this discussion in my paper on the Chitimacha phonemes, but the wider interest of the general discussion makes it more appropriate that it be published separately. The specific treatment of Chitimacha, which can now appear without theoretical digessions, will serve to illustrate many of the points discussed here. I do not attempt to cite previous authors1 on all of the points treated in this paper, though I recognize fully my dependence on them. On a few points my treatment attempts to avoid weaknesses in previous treatments, and a point or two are perhaps introduced here for the first time. However, the chief ideals of this paper are theoretical comprehensiveness, consistency of treatment, and brevity.

Richard Bentley has won only blame for wishing to change a 29 from μνσατο yp κατ ϑυμόν μὐμονο A to μνσατο yp κατ νουCν νομονο A; whereas his plan of writing the digamma into the Homeric text is still cited as one of his claims to fame. Yet in both cases he did much the same thing: he was unable to see why the traditional text was as it was, he was unwilling to grant a simple lack of understanding on his own part, and so he changed the text. Had he known Homer better, however, or known more about other early poetries, he would have seen that the unreasoned use of the fixed epithet is so common that we must explain it, not try to do away with it. First, the analysis of Homer's diction might have shown him that the poet had, to help him in his verse-making, many fixed phrases in which there was an epithet, and that he used these phrases so often that he forgot to think about the meaning of the epithets in them. Or second, the study of oral poetries might have shown him that the use of the fixed epithet is common there, and this would have led him on to the cause of metrical usefulness. It is the same for the digamma. Had Bentley, or any of all those scholars who have corrected Homer or printed the digamma in their editions been willing to grant that there might be some force acting on the Homeric language which they did not see, they would not have fought so fiercely against the stubborn text. But they had seen a part of the truth, and they were beguiled by the complexity of what they had seen. Yet a fuller knowledge of Homer's poetry and of oral poetry shows us why Homer's language has traces of the digamma, but not the digamma itself.

The development of the conjugation of Spanish verbs of the types vestir, sentir, and dormir has been treated with great skill and resourcefulness by Menéndez-Pidal and more recently by P. Fouché. Neither the theory of Menéndez-Pidal nor that of Fouché for the development, for example, of Lat. vӗstio into Sp. visto, would account for the development giving the same result in Portuguese, because the type of verb (with ē in Lat.) on which Menéndez-Pidal bases his analogy does not fall into this class in Portuguese (e.g., mētio > męco) and often does not belong to the third conjugation (e.g., conceber), while the phonological phenomenon on which Fouché bases his argument, viz. ě > ie, is notably absent from Portuguese.

A#x00D0;ELMOD ‘noble-minded, virtuous’. This compound appears not to be recorded in OE, and occurs only once in the Brut:-