Developments in linguistic theory have shed important light upon the theory and practice of translation, resulting in the recognition that translating is basically not a process of matching surface forms by rules of correspondence, but rather a more complex procedure involving analysis, transfer, and restructuring. Such linguistic procedures as transformation and componential analysis provide far more satisfactory bases for translation than have existed in the past. At the same time, the theory of translation is able to provide linguistic science with new insights into structure and with improved methods for testing hypotheses.

Lat. uespillo ‘undertaker for the poorest classes’ is cognate with Hitt, wašpaš ‘clothes’, both showing a stem form *wosp- with further IE cognates. Close analysis of a variety of texts in both languages demonstrates the important position in Roman funerary practice of the ritual of dressing the corpse (performed by the undertaker), and the specific use of the Hittite term in the Old Kingdom as ‘clothes for the dead’. This collocation provides the semantic point of contact between the two lexical items: the matching of semantic mark necessary for a satisfactory etymology.

The following report presents some of the findings of several years’ research on the relations between standard English and the non-standard English used by Negro speakers in various urban ghetto areas. The immediate subject is the status of the copula and auxiliary be in Negro non-standard English. The approach to the problem combines the methods of generative grammar and phonology with techniques for the quantitative analysis of systematic variation. The notion ‘rule of grammar’ is enlarged to include the formal treatment of inherent variation as a part of linguistic structure. Furthermore, a model is presented for the decisive solution of abstract questions of rule form and rule relations, based upon the direct study of linguistic behavior.

Adherence to the binary principle in phonology conflicts with the simplicity criterion proposed by Halle, in the sense that rules which are intuitively more general are not consistently simpler than less general rules. This, together with the counter-intuitive nature of rules for vowel shift and pitch raising and lowering when formulated in binary terms, suggests the need for abandoning the binary principle. Multivalued features seem to offer a solution to these inadequacies without introducing any additional complications.

For no apparent reason, Germanic may reflect a pre-Germanic /p/ where a reflex of IE /kw/ might be expected. The appearance of the /p/-reflexes is sporadic, inconsistent, and wholly unpredictable. All attempts to explain them in terms of phonologically definable processes are flatly contradicted by the reflexes themselves. It is suggested that the problem raised by their apparently capricious behavior is not a matter of phonology per se. Rather, they are due partly to borrowing (which is by nature sporadic, inconsistent, and unpredictable), and partly to contamination.

Phonological change may be implemented in a manner that is phonetically abrupt but lexically gradual. As the change diffuses across the lexicon, it may not reach all the morphemes to which it is applicable. If there is another change competing for part of the lexicon, residue may result. Several fundamental issues in the theory of phonological change are raised and discussed.

The chief views requiring the Assumption’ of proto-language uniformity are evaluated. The conclusion is reached that the ‘assumption’ can usefully be replaced by (1) a hypothesis regarding the relation of the reconstructed phonemic system to that of some occurrent idiolect, and (2) an assumption regarding the interrelevance of non-irreconcilable reconstructions. In the course of developing the argument, the article touches on the law of the regularity of phonetic change, and proposes a definition of the comparative method.

The Negro dialect, Black English, has a distinctive use of be as a main verb, expressing iteration rather than instantaneous or constant states. Although the Standard English phrases will be and would be can have a meaning similar to Black English be, phonological deletion of these modals cannot account for all occurrences of be in Black English. It is argued that the best analysis is one which recognizes only one verb to be, which can occur without tense.

The syntactically definable category of proper nouns is only a subclass of the orthographically definable class. Many capitalized nouns, e.g. Kodak and Purex, are not members of the syntactically definable class. Further, the syntactic proper nouns are a subclass of the countable nouns of English. Proper nouns permit the selection of essentially the same set of determiners as other countable nouns, differing materially only in that they require a zero allomorph of unstressed the when singular and when not preceded by a restrictive adjective or followed by a restrictive relative clause. Proper nouns, like other countable nouns, are freely pluralizable. Allowing free selection of determiners and numbers with proper nouns obviously simplifies the statement of selectional restrictions with regard to determiners, numbers, and nouns, and at the same time simplifies the statement of the selectional restrictions that hold between a noun phrase and its appositive noun phrase. These syntactic gains are not dissipated in semantic losses. Allowing free selection does not permit the generation of semantic anomalies. Determiner plus proper noun constructions are not semantically peculiar. Grimm means the same thing in Grimm wrote the book as in The famous Grimm wrote the book; thus it seems pointless to conclude that Grimm is being ‘used as’ a common noun in the latter.

Rigvedic words beginning with a single consonant followed by a light first syllable (a short vowel plus a single prevocalic consonant, e.g. kárati, pr̥thú, etc.) are found to occur only rarely in positions where they follow a word ending with a light syllable. Scholars have been struck by this patterning when it has turned up in seeming instances of Sievers-Edgerton phenomena, for instance gámati ‘he will go’ < *gwm̥meti; the distribution of these words has been interpreted as a significant relic of the original distribution of Proto-Indo-European semivowel alternants. But it is pointed out here that metrical configuration alone is sufficient to account for all the facts, and that most (or perhaps all) of the original gámati types of data are insignificant as evidence supporting the Sievers-Edgerton theory.

Various proposals have been advanced concerning what has been referred to as ‘refutation of the nil hypothesis’ in language comparisons, i.e. that the sound-meaning correspondences found for any two particular languages are within the range of what one would expect by sheer coincidence. Swadesh concludes that at 95% confidence level, four or more cognates in a list of 100 basic vocabulary items justify accepting a hypothesis of genetic relationship. H. K. J. Cowan estimates that the existence of three or more cognates is sufficient at the same level. Both these proposals are based on mathematical formulations, Cowan’s the more sophisticated. Approaching the problem from the empirical side, 100-item lists in 21 languages are here used to arrive at a conclusion that the presence of more than two solid CVC sound-meaning correspondences in languages believed to be unrelated raises a strong probability that more than chance is involved.

The distinction between ‘full verbs’ and ‘auxiliaries’ is not relevant to tense: criteria of compatibility with temporal adverbs etc. suggest that separate tense selections are associated with the modal and aspectual auxiliaries, which are accordingly analysed as main verbs in deep structure. Deep tense, a ternary system, is contrasted with the binary surface-tense system: deep tense is marked by conjunctions, by temporal specifiers, and by the class of the preceding verb, as well as by surface tense inflections; while surface tense marks the axis of orientation and unreality as well as deep tense proper. Co-occurrence relations between tenses and temporal specifiers are examined; the last section deals with the realunreal contrast in if clauses.

IE *kugh- violates the rules for the consonant structure of Indo-European roots; the development of IE *kugh-ti- to Gmc. *hug-di-, doubtful for other reasons as well, must therefore be rejected. But from the Germanic root *hug- we would expect the *-ti-abstract *huh-ti-; thus *hug-di-, the form actually functioning as abstract to *hug-, must be an analogical formation. *-hug~di-z is built on the stem of the preterite and past participle of *hug-, which in Germanic followed the pattern of the ē-verbs.

Two structural patterns, rather common in recent Serbo-Croatian but infrequent in most other Slavic languages, are treated. One is the compounding of two nouns into a morpho-syntactic unit equivalent to a single noun, in which the first component remains unchanged as the nominative singular form, while the second element is declined. The other is the indeclinable adjectival attribute. Both patterns may be attributed to foreign influence, originally Turkish, later replaced by that of German and other western languages.

Over the last eight centuries the morphophonemic rules relevant to prefixes in Ukrainian have undergone a number of changes which are here defined and dated relative to one another. The changes are then categorized typologically, and the mechanism of change involved in two of the types is discussed in detail. It is shown that the direction of change in morphophonemics is determined by different synchronic relations between rules and marked lexical items. The changes analysed permit important inferences about the abstractness of phonological representations.

In two of the language families of India, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan, there is a common pattern of onomatopoetics, in their formation and also in part in their syntactic use, with proliferation of items in most of the languages for which there is adequate information. Comparison, based on the etymological dictionaries of the two families, yields some forty areal etymologies, i.e. overlapping which provides what within a single family would be considered clusters of etyma. Since the Indo-Aryan family seems not to inherit the pattern from Indo-European, diffusion is postulated from Dravidian both for the pattern and for some etymological items.