[The term means ‘Breastplate of Light’, and is to be connected with an Avestan *raočå. vār∂θman-. Discussion of the phonetic and morphologic questions raised by this interpretation.]

[The author points out cases in which contiguous languages, though different in structure and vocabulary, exhibit in common striking morphologic peculiarities that must have spread by borrowing from language to language. A simple genealogical classification cannot therefore adequately represent the development, but ‘hybridization’ must also be taken into account.]

The terms active and passive have become purely arbitrary ones, but, although misnomers if taken in their literal sense, the meaning is sufficiently clear to all students of grammar. The passive voice1 is used when the interest centers upon the subject of the sentence as the objective of the action expressed by the verb, or when the relation between the verb and its thought-object is stressed.2 Thus in the sentence: ‘My son was killed yesterday’, the thought-subject is not even expressed, so important is the connection between the thought-object ‘my son’ and the verb. If, however, the interest were in the perpetrator of the crime, the sentence might be: ‘That man killed my son’. For this form of the verb, the term active has come to be used. The addition of the agent or the means of the action gives the sentence a slightly different emphasis, but if the chief interest is still on the thought-object, the verb retains its passive form: ‘My son was killed by a freight-train (by his brother, etc.)‘. It should be noticed that the passive is more frequently used without the agent, the interest being entirely centered on the thought-object of the verb, i.e. the subject-passive. In many instances where the passive is used, the thought-subject is unknown.

[Hittite nouns in -a that denote the end of motion are not locatives but sentence doublets. They come partly from accusatives in -an, and in part parallel the dative-locatives in -i, which (cf. Engl. where, here, there) had come to express the end of motion. The dative-locatives in -i and those in -a both continue PIE cases that ended in an i-diphthong. The forms were originally conditioned by the initial sound of the following word. Subsequently the analogic extension of the -a form was favored in expressions of the end of motion by the fact that this was the only function common to the accusative and the dative-locative.

The construction is particularly frequent in proper names; and as the form resembles Babylonian proper names, the result has been the constant appearance of Hittite proper nouns in Accadian texts under what seems to be the form of their stem.]

[The long tried methods of Indo-European linguistics have proved themselves by the success with which they have been applied to other fields, for instance Central Algonkian and Athabaskan. An increasing interest in linguistics may be noted among workers in anthropology, culture history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. For all of them linguistics is of basic importance: its data and methods show better than those of any other discipline dealing with socialized behavior the possibility of a truly scientific study of society. Linguists should, on the other hand, become aware of what their science may mean for the interpretation of human conduct in general.]

All the Germanic languages agree in using the dative inflection to express what comparative grammar has shown to be an IE ablative function of comparison. It is not my intention to treat the broader aspects of the question further than to emphasise the fact that this function is not one that belongs to the genuine IE dative; but it was taken over by the Germanic dative along with other ablative, instrumental, and locative functions when the case inflections that were originally associated with these functions in IE disappeared during the Proto-Germanic period. What we call the Germanic dative case is therefore in function an ablative, an instrumental, ora locative, as well as a dative; and from the very beginning we may see one of the causes for the early disuse of the construction here studied, namely, the ambiguity in the context beside these other dative functions.

[Discussion of words cognate with: 1. Skt. gandha-; 2. Lith. našlỹs; 3. OIr. dorn; 4. NHG Iltis; 5. Ch. SI. mlěko.]

[Three sample items from a projected Dictionary of selected Indo-European synonyms described in the Introductory Note.]

[The etymological meaning ‘somewhere’ of this particle seems obsolete in the Homeric poems, in which it designates an emotional coloring that may be described as confident belief in something that cannot be demonstrated. Nowhere is it the expression of a doubt.]

[That Hittite denominatives in a(i) correspond to IE verbs in -āyō is supported by etymologies () and by agreement with Latin in method of formation (cf. aestuāre but piscārī) from u- and i-stems. In Hittite no ā-stems have been recognized, the suffix is therefore not a conglomerate. This adds new interest to the fact that in IE (esp. Rig Veda and Homer) many -āyō verbs have no corresponding ā-stem. Probably the IE ā-stems are largely ‘backformations’ patterned on a number of ā-stems that were (cf. Hirt) simply dissyllabic bases.]