In Ulfilas' translation of the New Testament, γονυπϵτ in Mark 10.17 is translated knussjands, and again in Mark 1.40 kniwam knussjands. Since the beginning of research in Germanic linguistics neither the meaning of knussjan nor its etymology has been satisfactorily determined. This article is an attempt to establish both, and also to classify several groups of words in the Germanic dialects which from time to time have been wrongly associated both with Goth. knussjan and with one another.

The Hungarian language belongs to the Ugric branch of the Finno-Ugric stock; it is therefore not related to Germanic, Slavic, or any other Indo-European language. The only other national language in Europe of the Finno-Ugric stock is Finnish. Hungarian is more closely related, however, to the other languages of the Ugric division, namely Vogulian and Ostjak, spoken by tribes in the Ob and Irtis regions of northwestern Siberia. Further relationship of the Finno-Ugric stock to the languages of the Samojed group, forming an ‘Ural’ stock, and of the ‘Ural’ stock thus formed to the ‘Altaic’ languages (the Turkish, Mongolian, and Manchu-tung groups), and possibly to Japanese, thus forming a great ‘Ural-Altaic’ family, has been postulated, but it is not regarded as definitely proven.

[If we accept the Indo-Hittite hypothesis, the existence of middle r-paradigms in both Hittite and Indo-European puts the middle ending -r back into Indo-Hittite. Even if we assume that Hittite is simply one of the IE dialects, the evidence for medial r-forms in PIE is still overwhelmingly strong. The semantic aspect is important. There is virtually no positive evidence for a volitive impersonal in -r. But verbal r-forms with middle meaning occur in Indo-Iranian, Tocharian, Hittite, Armenian, Phrygian, Venetic, Italic, and Celtic. This proves that not only r-forms, but r-forms with middle meaning, were inherited.]

The ‘laryngeal’ hypothesis poses a problem concerning the Indo-European ā-stem nouns and verbs, for IE ā may result from the loss either of a following x or of a following;. In the present state of our knowledge a decision between the two possibilities can be reached only on the basis of Hittite evidence; IH x appears in Hittite as ḫ, usually written double between vowels, while IH; is lost, or at least not written in Hittite. In the case before us the Hittite evidence makes it necessary to assume IH x in some words and; in others. The Indo-European ā-stems must therefore be divided into two originally distinct classes.

Any attempt to clarify the development of the German word Verhältnis must start from the article, in which the Deutsches Wörterbuch discusses it—rather a voluminous article, but, as will be seen presently, by no means an exhaustive one.

The familiar doctrine that Primitive Indo-European possessed a full-grade (accented) vowel o derives from Ferdinand de Saussure. His thesis was that in addition to in ablaut relation to e there was another vowel which appeared in Greek and Italic as o and which was due to the influence of a certain lost consonant of undefined character. He had three reasons for this assumption: (1) Greek and Italic present in certain words an that is not observed to alternate with . (2) Greek and Italic o in open syllables corresponds to Indo-Iranian ā, according to ‘Brugmann's law’; but sometimes Graeco-Italic o corresponds to Indo-Iranian a in open syllables, and de Saussure held that-such pairs came from the full-grade, non-ablauting o. (3) Armenian usually responds to Graeco-Italic o with o, but in certain words with a, and in these words again de Saussure found full-grade, non-ablauting o. A fourth reason was later supplied by Zubaty, who held that in Lithuanian full-grade ō appears as uo while original ō in ablaut relation with e or ē appears as o.

[The High German shift of West Germanic initial [k-], currently defined as a shift to an affricate, can be defined in the phoneme system of the dialects only as a shift to a combination of stop plus related spirant [kx-, kh-, gh-]. This definition enables us to apply an exact criterion to some of the dialects. The shift of [k-] covers a larger territory than appears under the current formulation: it covers all the Upper German (Apfel) dialects and in the west extends beyond them.]

Hittite verbs fall into two conjugations, one of which shows in the first person singular active an ending -mi and the other an ending -ḫi; it is customary to speak of the mi-conjugation and the ḫi-conjugation. Now Greek verbs are commonly classified as μι-verbs and ω-verbs. Consequently it naturally occurred to Hrozný, Sprache der Hethiter 101, that, as the Hittite ending -mi is identical with Gk. -μι, so Hitt. -ḫi ought to be identical with Gk. -ω. The first attempt to carry through this suggestion in detail has just been published by Couvreur, Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves 4.551-73 (1936).

It is well known that a very large number of American Indian languages number among their phonemes glottalized stops and affricates (e.g. p̓, t̓, k̓, q̓, k̓w, q̓w, c̓, č̓). Examples of such languages or groups of languages are Dakota, Winnebago, Ponca and other Siouan languages; Tonkawa; Chitimacha; Kootenay; Salish languages; Sahaptin languages; Chinookan; Tlingit; Haida; Tsimshian; Kwakiutl and Nootka; Chimakuan; Athapaskan languages (e.g. Navaho;) Alsea; Siuslaw; Coos; Takelma; Karok; Shasta; Achumawi and Atsugewi; Porno; Chimariko; Yana; Klamath and Modoc; Kalapuya; Yana; Yurok; Yuki; Wintun; Yokuts; Washo; Keres; Tanoan languages; Kiowa; Mayan languages; Quechua. In most of these languages the glottalized consonants are fortes, as in Chinookan and Athapaskan; in others, as in Chitimacha and Taos (Tanoan), they are lenes. In the overwhelming majority of cases the glottal release is posterior to the oral release, precisely as in Georgian and other Caucasic languages. These glottalized consonants are sometimes known as ‘ejectives’. In some languages, however, the oral and glottal releases are synchronous. An example of a language having glottalized consonants of this type is Southern Paiute (Shoshonean), where they are not true phonemes, however, as they may always be analyzed into stop (or affricate) +?.

The forty odd years which have elapsed since the first publication of a Tocharian text leave much for the comparativist to do. As clear as is the affinity of both dialects A and B to Indo-European, even so inexplicable are still many of the countless special developments that have led to their remarkable appearance alongside the other languages of the family. It is, in fact, the problem of the relationship of Tocharian to the other Indo-European dialects which has most interested scholars from the very beginning, while very little time has been devoted to the comparative study of the two dialects themselves. Indeed, their interrelationship is as yet quite imperfectly understood. As remarked already by M. Sylvain Levi, in speaking of the vocabulary, the more one observes their fundamental identity, the more one is struck by their divergences. The remark may apply no less appropriately to the phonology.

Problems connected with the borrowing of words from language to language have occupied the attention of many linguists. In most cases this attention has been focused on languages of the remote past, where opportunity for first-hand phonetic observation has been cut off entirely. In the meanwhile borrowing has been going on within the United States on a scale rarely equalled in history, between English on the one hand and all the immigrant languages on the other. Here it becomes possible to record by modern means and to study by modern methods the phonetic form of each word in each of its incarnations, foreign, American, or hybrid. In the following study of one such dialect the writer wishes to present a concrete instance of the possibilities inherent in this kind of research.

In the earlier stages of work on the Hopi language I had the pleasant feeling of being in familiar linguistic territory. Here, wondrous to relate, was an exotic language cut very much on the pattern of Indo-European; a language with clearly distinct nouns, verbs, and adjectives, with voices, aspects, tense-moods, and no outré categories, no gender-like classes based on shape of objects, no pronouns referring to tribal status, presence, absence, visibility, or invisibility.

The term ‘polarity’ was adopted for linguistic purposes by Carl Meinhof, who introduced it in his comparative account of the Hamitic languages, published in 1912. Slow at first in gaining currency, this designation has steadily been increasing in popularity; today it stands for a widely recognized principle said to be operative alike in the Hamitic and Semitic languages.