The studies of Gilliéron and his followers in linguistic geography have made us familiar with the doctrine that two words of different origin which become homonyms by regular sound-changes may interfere with one another to such an extent that one is ultimately excluded from the vocabulary of a given dialect. The lack of a linguistic atlas of England has prevented the application of this principle, and likewise of others expounded by Gilliéron, to English dialects. For it was the comparison of maps which enabled Gilliéron and Roques to show, for example, that only in those French dialects where mulgere would have become homonymous with molere, is it replaced by other words for ‘milk’, such as tirer, traire, ajuster, aria, blechi, etc. Although neat demonstration of this sort is seldom possible in English, conclusions about the conflict of homonyms may sometimes be reached, in the absence of an atlas, by more roundabout methods. Enough information for reasonable deductions may be obtained from the combined materials of the English Dialect Dictionary, which gives the distribution of a large part of the vocabulary in modern dialects, and the New English Dictionary, which gives a detailed semantic history and the approximate time of a word's disappearance from the language.

Linguistic science is still based on the formulation that phonetic change is regular and invariable, provided the conditions in which the sounds stand are the same. The moderate chorus of dissent in recent years has come largely from the dialect-geographers, who have found variations which to them indicate the invalidity of the formulation; but in reality their findings demonstrate rather that the differences of environmental conditions are unexpectedly complex in character: dialectal areas are unexpectedly small, social dialects are found to exist, dialect mixtures are omnipresent, especially where the movement of population is free.

As far back as 1922, in an article which in many respects remains the most significant contribution yet made to the larger understanding of the status of Tocharian, Eduard Hermann pointed out the importance of Tibetan because of its far-reaching morphological influence on Tocharian. Little attention, however, seems to have been paid to this aspect of the Tocharian problem, yet it is safe to say that one can not take a step in interpreting the forms of Tocharian, syntax and morphology both, unless one bears in mind the moulding influence exerted on Tocharian, both A and B, by this non-Indo-European language. In brief, Tocharian is a Tibetanized Indo-European idiom. Once this is understood, the much discussed problem of whether both A and B were spoken in Chinese Turkestan or B (‘Kuchean‘) alone, the A manuscripts appearing in the eastern part of the area merely because they were brought there by speakers of B from a real or supposed western home in Tokharestan (Bactria), falls by the wayside as an utterly pointless question. If dialect A has specifically Tibetan features in its structure—and it has—how could these have developed except through actual contact between speakers of Tocharian A and speakers of Tibetan, and where could such contact be had except in Chinese Turkestan itself, at a point not far removed from linguistically Tibetan territory?

The verb προσκυνϵῖν, which is commonly used to describe the worship of the gods and the obeisance before rulers, has been the subject of several recent discussions in connection with its use in the New Testament and in the literature of the imperial cult. In a paper on Alexander, Schnabel, relying chiefly on the etymological meaning of the word, explained the proskynesis at Bactra as a kiss sent to the daimon of Alexander. This view was adopted by some scholars. But another interpretation of προσκυνϵῖν has recently found favor. Bolkestein, in his study of the Deisidaimonia in Theophrastos, has attempted to show that the gesture implied in προσκυνϵῖν was to kneel and not to send a kiss. Proskynesis, he says, is generally supposed to have had two distinct meanings, the first one implying a hand.-kissing gesture, the second indicating the Oriental obeisance. But, Bolkestein (30) continues, a careful examination of the texts shows that, although προσκυνϵῖν originally meant ‘zu Fuss fallen und küssen’, in Greek literature it is used only for a kneeling gesture; if the hand-kissing gesture was known in the religion of ancient and classical Greece it was never called proskynesis. The result of Bolkestein's study may be seen in Nock's statement that 'kneeling is the only meaning of the word, as Bolkestein has shown.' In his admirable article on the ceremonial of the Imperial court, Alföldi accepts Bolkestein's interpretation. He calls Berve's explanation of προσκυνϵῖν ώς θϵὸν τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον as a hand-kissing gesture 'ein Irrtum, verursacht durch die seither durch Bolkestein widerlegte übliche Erklärung der griechischen Proskynese.' In Horst's recent study of the verb προσκυνϵῖν, the gesture implied, especially in the classical period, is not discussed in detail, though Horst does not entirely accept Bolkestein's results.

The relative pronouns in Old English are þe and se, þe being used when the clause has the function of a limiting or distinguishing adjective and se when it has the function of a descriptive adjective, e.g.:

Se casere þe wæs Claudius haten ‘the Emperor called Claudius’.

Se casere, se wæs Claudius haten ‘the Emperor, who was called Claudius’.

In the first sentence the relative clause distinguishes one particular emperor from others, in the second it adds a descriptive detail to a noun already sufficiently defined. Both kinds of clause may qualify the same noun, e.g.: Hom. I. 100.4 Se eahtateoða dæg þæs monðes þe we hatað Martius þone ge hatað Hlyda ‘the 18th day of the month that we call March, which you call Hlyda’. The analogy of other subordinate clauses leads us to expect that conjunctive order will be the rule in the relative clause, and this we find to be the case; but common order is a frequent exception especially when the verb is unstressed, e.g., ‘sum mæsse-preost on þam lande þe is gehaten Hispania se wæs ðearle geswenct’. Occasionally the order of subject and verb is inverted as in ‘Abel þone ofsloh Cain his broðor’.