Twenty years ago I discussed the Hittite development of the original diphthongs. My views on the vowel system of Proto-Indo-Hittite and of Hittite have undergone several important changes in the past twenty years; but I still hold essentially the same opinion as then about the Hittite development of IH long diphthongs, and for about the same reasons. I find, however, that more or less serious doubts prevail about this feature of Hittite phonology; I must try again.

The original key to the interpretation of Hittite cuneiform writing was, of course, furnished by our knowledge of Akkadian writing. Since, however, Akkadian possessed no diphthongs, we cannot expect to learn from that source how the Hittites wrote whatever diphthongs their language may have possessed.

Leonard Bloomfield, in his book Language, makes the statement:

Two later writers, discussing the reconstruction of earlier stages of related languages, have made relevant statements in this connection. Bruno Migliorini says

This study of unequal comparison was undertaken in order to establish with greater precision the distinction between the uses of que and de to connect the elements of the comparison. The problem is neatly stated from the English standpoint as ‘que and de as translations of than’. The material covered—approximately a million running words of Spanish and Spanish American authors, in addition to responses from a number of native speakers—was broad enough to enable some other conclusions to be reached besides those embraced by the original problem. The written sources include a wide variety of modern literary, scientific, and journalistic prose.

Morphophonemics, as the term is used here, subsumes every phase of the phonemic shape of morphemes: the typical shapes of alternants, the types of alternation, and the various environmental factors (phonological or grammatical) which elicit one alternant or another of those morphemes which appear in more than one shape. This usage is broader than some which have recently been described, for instance by Bloch and by Wells.

Introductory. In earlier papers of this series, Japanese forms are cited in a transcription that purports to be phonemic; the system that underlies the transcription is briefly outlined in the footnotes. On closer examination that system proves to be untenable. Instead of being purely phonemic, it is heavily influenced by unformulated morphophonemic considerations, and even, to some extent, by the traditional representation of Japanese in roman letters. There is room, then, for a new and more careful study of Japanese phonemics, based solely on the sounds that occur in Japanese utterances and on their distribution. Such a study is the object of the present paper. The dialect to be investigated is the modern standard colloquial, defined as the speech of educated persons native to Tokyo.

Material for the following two sketches was gathered in January 1949 at Korhogo, Ivory Coast, and at Sikasso, French Sudan. This study was made possible by a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, and by the generous hospitality of the Conservative Baptist Mission at Korhogo and the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which has a station at Sikasso.

According to the best information available in advance, it was expected that this would be a study of ‘the Senufo language’. In both areas, the people and the language are commonly known as ‘Senufo’ to the French, to missionaries, and to traders of other tribes. However, it was soon discovered that natives of the Sikasso area and natives of the Korhogo area speak languages which are not mutually intelligible; the informant used at Sikasso was taken to Korhogo, and found it necessary to communicate with the people there in Bambara, the trade language of the area, or in French.