One of the fundamental linguistic sources of inference about prehistoric migrations is the geographical distribution of related languages. This paper attempts to set forth the structures of such distributions and of the hypotheses which explain them. The presentation is perhaps too formulaic and too simplistic. Further collection of instances in recorded history should provide the proper testing of the formulae and their correction or, if they prove useful, their further elaboration.

Albanian possesses a palatal semivowel represented orthographically by j. Although this sound appears in initial position, it does not seem likely that it is the normal Albanian development of initial IE */y/. Albanian j- is seen most frequently in loanwords : jarm ‘plow’ < Bulg jarьn ‘yoke’ ; jir ‘edge’ < NGk. gûros ‘extent, embrace’; ‘a type of guitar’ < Turk, jongar ‘guitar’.

In Lehmann's recent article on the Proto-Indo-European resonants in Germanic (Lg. 31.355–66), he adduces some evidence pointing to the retention, in Germanic, of the allophonic distribution posited for liquids and nasals in Proto-Indo-European (§4.1, §4.3). In this connection he discusses certain metrical features which require that the nasals, in some cases, be considered syllabic. In addition, some forms containing nasals are discussed in terms of strictly structural criteria. Involved are the graphs um, un (ul, ur), these being the Germanic reflexes of the Indo-European syllabic resonants. It is commonly considered that the u, in these cases, developed as a prop-vowel when the nasal or liquid (in zero grade) no longer functioned as a syllabic. It is further usually considered that by the time of the earliest Germanic texts this u, originally automatic in the neighborhood of nasals and liquids (in zero grade), had become phonemic, merging with the reflex of IE u.

[In support of the theory that the Gothic digraph ai denoted relatively low front monophthongal values when it occurred in inflectional endings, the orthographic and morphological evidence is re-examined in detail. The paper shows that this evidence does not justify narrower quantitative and qualitative interpretations, and considers the possibility of reconciling the conclusions reached here with a plausible system of phonemic segmentation.]

[Spanish intonational structure is described in terms of three terminal junctures, three pitch phonemes, and three stress phonemes, with other intonation-like phenomena described as of a different order of structuring, the vocalizations. Internal open juncture is described as a segmental phoneme marked by a variety of distributional evidence in the allophones of the vocalic and consonantal segments.]

[Samples of printed English sentences of three lengths were drawn randomly from a representative selection of popular magazines. The words of each sentence were classified according to Fries's system and a count was made of the various word classes at each sentence position. The tabulations were plotted as frequency distributions and treated statistically. Principally, the data obtained from all three sentence lengths indicate (1) that the greatest variations in word-class frequency tend to occur in sentence extremes and the immediately adjoining positions, and (2) that different word classes have characteristic patterns of variation.]