[IE prevocalic iy and y, uw and w, after a consonant, were each a single phoneme, varying automatically under fixed phonetic conditions (essentially, y and w after a light syllable, iy and uw after a heavy). This was equally true of liquids and nasals (:r, etc.). The i, u ( etc.) in such cases was a vowel of the quality of the following semi-vowel and cannot have been ‘schwa secundum’. From this it can be indirectly but convincingly inferred that the weak-grade forms of dissyllabic bases contained preconsonantal IE (not only ī, ū but also) , , , .]

No comprehensive study of ablaut in ME strong verbs has as yet been made; nor will such a study be possible until all of the regional dialects have been investigated in detail. Some work has already been done:1 Bülbring has thoroughly examined all texts written in Southern English; Wackerzapp and Hannsen have done the same for Northern English, and Knopff for the Scottish dialect of English; Öfverberg, in his study of verbal inflections in the East Midlands, has given us some, but by no means adequate, information regarding ablaut in that area; finally, Andrew has in a brief article brought out certain features of ablaut in the dialects of the Northwest Midlands. The greater part of the Midland area has been relatively unexplored, and there is need for an exhaustive investigation of this entire region of England. It is the purpose of this dissertation to discover and present the development of ablaut in strong verbs in the East and Central Midlands, and thus fill in part the gap in our knowledge of this phase of Middle English morphology.

As basic as the phonemic principle is to linguistic science, it is only quite recently that it has had the serious attention of linguists. In studying the phonemes of Chitimacha (an Indian language of Louisiana) I knew of no single source from which I could learn to understand all the phenomena that I observed. There seemed to be a need for an adequate and complete exposition of the phonemic principle including, especially, an account of how it applies to the more marginal and difficult types of phenomena. I at first intended to include this discussion in my paper on the Chitimacha phonemes, but the wider interest of the general discussion makes it more appropriate that it be published separately. The specific treatment of Chitimacha, which can now appear without theoretical digessions, will serve to illustrate many of the points discussed here. I do not attempt to cite previous authors1 on all of the points treated in this paper, though I recognize fully my dependence on them. On a few points my treatment attempts to avoid weaknesses in previous treatments, and a point or two are perhaps introduced here for the first time. However, the chief ideals of this paper are theoretical comprehensiveness, consistency of treatment, and brevity.

[Although a generally accepted solution of the problem of Hittite h has not yet been found, the discussion of various theories adduced has brought out a number of facts and probabilities which must be recognized in further attempts, and which have narrowed down the problem considerably. It will consequently be advantageous to examine such of these hypotheses as have not been definitely abandoned, and to determine, if possible, what features of these must be incorporated in a theory that may hold promise of satisfying all conditions.]

§1. In the history of Low German the period from the beginning of the thirteenth century to about the middle of the sixteenth is called the middle period; the language of this period is Middle Low German. The substitution in the records, of the native idiom for Latin, marks the beginning of this period; the gradual shift to the use of High German marks its end. Written MLG experienced standardization (much as has NHG), but not to the point of absolute uniformity; local characteristics persist throughout the documents. By virtue of these localisms, even the most standardized written MLG falls into four dialectically colored types, which correspond to the indigenous dialect grouping of Westphalian, Eastphalian, North-Saxon (Nordniedersächsisch), and Brandenburgian. Of these, North-Saxon, extending over the coastal regions from Oldenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck, to Pomerania and beyond, acquired the greatest influence and importance, and the standardization of MLG writing was in the direction of the North-Saxon forms. It is generally supposed that the MLG written language of the East-Baltic territory (i.e., Estonia, Livonia, and Courland in the Middle Ages) belonged to the North-Saxon group. The evidence for this is still scanty; in this study I shall show that in at least one important set of records, the Baltic Low German of Riga (Latvia) shows the North-Saxon phonology. This set of records is the first of a series of Deed Registries (Erbebücher, official town-records of real-estate transfers) in the city archives of Riga.

It is the purpose of this study of neuter nouns in Vergil's works, to show, from the statistics of their occurrence and an examination of their uses:

(a) That the greater metrical convenience of the nominative and accusative plural of neuters led to their use instead of the corresponding singulars in Latin dactylic verse.

[A description is given of the peculiarities in the dialect of certain English-speaking persons with a Pennsylvania Dutch background. Such of these as can be traced to German are found to be not phonologic, nor morphologic, but purely syntactic, and lexical. It is argued that we have no right to ascribe a broader influence to ‘substrata‘ that are imperfectly known.)

[It is shown that Latin vīnum, vīcus, vīdī, and vīs do not continue IE forms with woi-, for the representation of which in Latin we have consequently no evidence. ]

There are three distinct types of French spoken in Southern Louisiana. The first, that with which this paper deals primarily, I have chosen to call Standard Louisiana-French. The term may or may not be appropriate, but it is at least convenient. The correct name would be Creole-French, but unfortunately that name has been applied too often to the Negro-French dialects of Louisiana, the French Antilles, and the Mascarenes for its use to be unambiguous, especially since not all are familiar with the application of the name ‘Creole’ in Louisiana only to the white descendants of European (French, Spanish) settlers. Standard (Louisiana-)French is still spoken by many of the more cultivated whites—particularly by the urban population—of Southern Louisiana, and more especially of what is known as the ‘Southwest Louisiana Parishes’.

Richard Bentley has won only blame for wishing to change a 29 from μνσατο yp κατ ϑυμόν μὐμονο A to μνσατο yp κατ νουCν νομονο A; whereas his plan of writing the digamma into the Homeric text is still cited as one of his claims to fame. Yet in both cases he did much the same thing: he was unable to see why the traditional text was as it was, he was unwilling to grant a simple lack of understanding on his own part, and so he changed the text. Had he known Homer better, however, or known more about other early poetries, he would have seen that the unreasoned use of the fixed epithet is so common that we must explain it, not try to do away with it. First, the analysis of Homer's diction might have shown him that the poet had, to help him in his verse-making, many fixed phrases in which there was an epithet, and that he used these phrases so often that he forgot to think about the meaning of the epithets in them. Or second, the study of oral poetries might have shown him that the use of the fixed epithet is common there, and this would have led him on to the cause of metrical usefulness. It is the same for the digamma. Had Bentley, or any of all those scholars who have corrected Homer or printed the digamma in their editions been willing to grant that there might be some force acting on the Homeric language which they did not see, they would not have fought so fiercely against the stubborn text. But they had seen a part of the truth, and they were beguiled by the complexity of what they had seen. Yet a fuller knowledge of Homer's poetry and of oral poetry shows us why Homer's language has traces of the digamma, but not the digamma itself.

[The abundance of i-stem adjectives in Latin and Hittite is inherited from Indo-Hittite. The suffix tis formed from verbal roots adjectives as well as nouns, and a few formations of this sort survive in the historical languages. A similar suffix may have formed adjectives from adverbs.]

[The Hittite and Greek forms are not cognate. Hittite borrowed its word from Semitic; Greek did the same either through Hittite or through some ‘Asianic’ language.]

The development of the conjugation of Spanish verbs of the types vestir, sentir, and dormir has been treated with great skill and resourcefulness by Menéndez-Pidal and more recently by P. Fouché. Neither the theory of Menéndez-Pidal nor that of Fouché for the development, for example, of Lat. vӗstio into Sp. visto, would account for the development giving the same result in Portuguese, because the type of verb (with ē in Lat.) on which Menéndez-Pidal bases his analogy does not fall into this class in Portuguese (e.g., mētio > męco) and often does not belong to the third conjugation (e.g., conceber), while the phonological phenomenon on which Fouché bases his argument, viz. ě > ie, is notably absent from Portuguese.

In Language 10. 43ff. (1934), R. G. Kent, in his review of L. Bloomfield's Language (New York, 1933), mentions Bloomfield's transcription of the Russian word for city, gorod. Bloomfield writes ['gorot], while Kent would prefer ['gort]. The justification given to Kent by Bloomfield for his transcription is: 'Weakening of unstressed syllables in Russian is sufficiently indicated when the place of accent is given, i.e., ['gorot] but plural [goro'da] tells as much as ['gorǝt, gǝra'da]: in fact, to the persons who know the rule which you cite, it tells more, since each of these transcriptions indicates both the accented and the unstressed forms of each vowel-phoneme, whereas ['gort], for instance, fails to tell whether the second syllable has [o] or [a] or [i].'

[See the introductory paragraphs and the section headings.]

Certain phonetic tendencies seem to come to an end without any-known cause (cf. the first and second sound shifts in the Germ. languages); others cease because of certain counter influences which develop, either phonetic or analogical.