The purpose of this paper is to present the outlines of a method of syntactic description that is new insofar as it combines methods developed by the Polish logician Kasimir Ajdukiewicz on the one hand and by American structural linguists on the other. Such a combination has apparently not been undertaken before, if only for the reason that Ajdukiewicz's paper appeared in a Polish philosophical journal and has therefore remained unknown to most linguists.

Lucumí is a term here used to refer to a language spoken in Cuba by practitioners of the religion known as Santería. In Cuba both the santeros and the language are often called Lucumí, a form of which the origin has been discussed by William Bascom. Bascom seems to have been the first to assert positively that Lucumí is derived from Yoruba, a language of southwestern Nigeria. This view is supported by the folklore of Lucumí-speakers, which often contains propositions like these: Lucumí is Yoruba; Lucumí and Yoruba are the same thing; Lucumí is a dialect of Yoruba; Lucumí is a mixture of Yoruba dialects. Other writers have rejected the classification of Lucumí as related to Yoruba in the usual sense, and have called Lucumí a pidgin language. The purpose of this paper is to test Bascom's hypothesis by the comparative method—specifically, by investigating phoneme correspondences in cognate items.

La comparaison de la flexion pronominale hittite avec celle des langues apparentées fait ressortir immédiatement deux traits distinctifs: d'une part le hittite se conforme au modèle indo-européen en attribuant des flexions différentes aux noms et aux pronoms; de l'autre, la flexion pronominale n'a en hittite à peu près rien de commun avec le système admis comme indo-européen. Cette situation mérite examen, et l'objet de ces pages est même de montrer que certaines correspondances tenues pour certaines sont fallacieuses, et que c'est en soulignant ces différences qu'on prépare une interprétation meilleure des faits hittites aussi bien que de la préhistoire des pronoms en indo-européen.

Contrast between sounds can be defined, I think, on the basis of distribution alone, without the customary appeal to meaning. On two earlier occasions I tried to formulate such a definition, but both times without success—largely because the essential criterion was not yet clear to me. A number of readers, fastening on the weak spot in my argument, have quite properly refused to accept the conclusions based on it. This third attempt to state my position has the excuse that I now think I know what the position is.

Among the Anatolian proper names transmitted to us in the Old Assyrian tablets from Cappadocia, those in -uman and -l(i)ka, in and -aššu, and finally those in -iyat/iet are particularly characteristic. Their analysis, undertaken elsewhere, has shown that they contain the following identifiable theophorous elements: Aššiyat, Ḫalki, Ilaliya, Inar(a), Išput, Perwa, Tarawa, and possibly Šiwat. The question arises whether these gods can be ascribed to a definite ethnic and linguistic layer of early Anatolia, such as is known to us from the Boğazköy texts.

This paper is restricted to one feature of the Icelandic sound system: quantity in the structure of the syllable. Moreover, I am confining myself to strest syllables; quantity in unstrest syllables will not be taken up. My treatment of the material will be synchronic, current Icelandic alone being considered.

[The Proto-Tocharian imperfect, based on IE optative formations, is preserved in Kuchean (Toch. B) but lost in Turfanian (Toch. A) except for two relics, the imperfects of the verbs ‘be’ and ‘go’. The remaining Turfanian imperfects are in origin identical with preterit formations found in Turfanian or in Kuchean or in both, which are all derived from IE perfects and aorists.]

Given the following groups of corresponding phonemes or phoneme sequences in Sanskrit, Greek, and Germanic: (1) v/ϝ/w, r/ρ/r, n/v/n, (2) u/v/u, r/ρa~aρ/ur, a/α/un, and (3) uv/v(ϝ)/(uw), ir(ur)/αρ/ur, an/av/un: the segments of sound lying behind group 1 were once in complementary distribution both with those behind group 2 and with those behind group 3. For the older stages of Indo-European, therefore, one needs to reconstruct only three entities: w, r, n (and likewise y, l, m for other sets not listed here), each with three positional variants of varying syllabicity. The argument has been most fully presented by Franklin Edgerton. In connection with that argument there has been some discussion whether the syllabic element in group 3 above should or should not be written ъ. Assuming for the moment that ъ has to be reconstructed in the neighborhood of stops to account for quattuor, πíσυρ∈s, and the like, the dilemma resembles that posed by the [k] of length in the description of some types of English : if we are impressed by its similarity to other [k]-like segments in environments where it is not automatically present, we say that there are some environments in which [k] is automatic but is phonemically /k/ nevertheless; but if we are more impressed by the automatic nature of its presence in length, we seize upon any phonetic detail that may distinguish this [k] from other [k]-like sounds elsewhere and see in the sequence [] merely the allophone of // before /θ/.2a If ъ is not recognized in quattuor, the problem hardly arises in the case of the nasals and liquids. For (i)y and (u)w it still exists, in a somewhat different form; but this question is here left out of account.

It is an honor to be invited to contribute to a number of Language dedicated to Franklin Edgerton, and it is a pleasure for me to accept the invitation. For that purpose I have selected three notes dealing with the language of the Iliad, which are held together by the fact that all three end with problems of the sort that Edgerton has dealt with so successfully in his reconstruction of the Panchatantra and in his edition of the Sabhāparvan of the Mahābhārata—problems of textual criticism.

This note discusses an Elamite etymology, hitherto unrecognized, to show how certain hypotheses concerning the interpretation of Elamite cuneiform writing can lead to a deeper understanding of Elamite phonology and morphology, and to a more precise identification of particular forms known from Elamite texts. Among the Elamite documents, the royal texts from the Achaemenid period represent a particular dialect that we shall call Royal Achaemenid Elamite (RAE). The existence of a large number of graphic variants for the same form in the RAE texts led Weissbach, as early as 1890, to certain phonemic conclusions regarding the Elamite cuneiform symbols.