The functional history of the IE negative prefix, the variants of which we conveniently designate by their central form *-, is an integral part of the history of IE composition. A classification of IE compounds, based on historical rather than logical considerations, would include (1) old types, generally declining during the historical period of IE—bahuvrīhis and synthetic compounds (verbale Rektionskomposita), and (2) distinctly younger types—pronominal hypostatics, determinatives, and copulatives.

The primary type of these two consonant clusters represents the PGmc. status when the two consonants were not due to the contraction of an intermediate vowel, whereas the secondary was the result of this contraction. In the primary type both Gothic and Old Norse show that l exerted an occlusive force on the following ð; cf. PGmc. *stĕ-staðĕ > *stĕ-stal-ð > Goth, stai-stal-d [not *stai-stal-þ] ‘acquired’; PGmc. *halðĕ > PN *hal-ð > *hal-d [not *hal-þ] > ON halt ‘hold’. Only Gothic shows that r exerted an occlusive force upon ð; cf. Goth, waur-d [not *waur-þ] ‘word’, but ON or-ð. For Old Norse we may then postulate the primary status as ld : rð.

Distinctive features occur in lumps or bundles, each one of which we call a phoneme. The speaker has been trained to make sound-producing movements in such a way that the phoneme-features will be present in the sound-waves, and he has been trained to respond only to these features and to ignore the rest of the gross acoustic mass that reaches his ears. Leonard Bloomfield (1933)

The number of different phonemes in a language is a small submultiple of the number of forms. Leonard Bloomfield (1926)

The logical demand that a science speak in quantitative terms is met by linguistics because it speaks in terms of phonemes. Leonard Bloomfield (1927)

The purpose of this paper is to present the outlines of a method of syntactic description that is new insofar as it combines methods developed by the Polish logician Kasimir Ajdukiewicz on the one hand and by American structural linguists on the other. Such a combination has apparently not been undertaken before, if only for the reason that Ajdukiewicz's paper appeared in a Polish philosophical journal and has therefore remained unknown to most linguists.

Contrast between sounds can be defined, I think, on the basis of distribution alone, without the customary appeal to meaning. On two earlier occasions I tried to formulate such a definition, but both times without success—largely because the essential criterion was not yet clear to me. A number of readers, fastening on the weak spot in my argument, have quite properly refused to accept the conclusions based on it. This third attempt to state my position has the excuse that I now think I know what the position is.

This paper is restricted to one feature of the Icelandic sound system: quantity in the structure of the syllable. Moreover, I am confining myself to strest syllables; quantity in unstrest syllables will not be taken up. My treatment of the material will be synchronic, current Icelandic alone being considered.

This note discusses an Elamite etymology, hitherto unrecognized, to show how certain hypotheses concerning the interpretation of Elamite cuneiform writing can lead to a deeper understanding of Elamite phonology and morphology, and to a more precise identification of particular forms known from Elamite texts. Among the Elamite documents, the royal texts from the Achaemenid period represent a particular dialect that we shall call Royal Achaemenid Elamite (RAE). The existence of a large number of graphic variants for the same form in the RAE texts led Weissbach, as early as 1890, to certain phonemic conclusions regarding the Elamite cuneiform symbols.