In the comparison of Tagalog, Malay, and Javanese, three well-exemplified correspondences involving final vowel (V) or laryngeal are found:

1. (1) Tg. -V : Ml. -V : Jv. -V (e.g. Tg. tubo, Ml. tăbu, Jv. tĕbu sugarcane').

2. (2) Tg. -V? : Ml. -Vh : Jv. -Vh (e.g. Tg. tu:bo? ‘grow’, Ml. tuboh ‘body’, Jv. tuwoh ‘growth‘).

1. This paper proposes some modifications of the family-tree diagram traditionally used to indicate genetic relationships in comparative linguistics. The flaws in the traditional diagram have long been recognized; it would be difficult to improve on Bloomfield's discussion of the subject in Language §§18.9–12. Although contemporary linguists have rejected the theory on which the branching diagram was originally based, they have not taken the logical next step of trying to improve the diagram itself so as to make it compatible with the revised theory. I shall attempt to show here that it is not necessary to reject branching diagrams entirely, but that it is possible to modify the traditional diagram so that it presents a truer and clearer picture of linguistic history as it is conceived at the present time. There are probably many possible ways in which we could depict linguistic history, and I do not attempt to do justice to all possibilities here; I hope only to show some variants on the traditional diagram which may lead to a better understanding of the potential use of such devices. First, a word on the role of diagrams in historical work. The diagrams which are presented here are not intended as theoretical models, but only as visual aids. Such diagrams are at best shorthand representations of the history of a group of languages, showing in a single picture the interrelations of the whole group. The primary danger to be avoided is that of overliteral interpretation; as Bloomfield says,

This paper will discuss some ramifications of the rules for producing noun modifiers in English. Most noun modifiers can be accounted for in a generative grammar by three transformational rules. The first of these adjoins a sentence to a noun as a relative clause, and the other two form post-nominal and prenominal modifiers by the operations of deletion and order change respectively. These three transformations will be referred to as embedding rules. They are applied once, in order, to a given sentence, and adjoin that sentence to a noun phrase as modifier. Not every noun phrase can accept a relative clause, however; for the embedding rules to work properly the grammar must include certain constraints on their application. The determiner of the noun phrase is the decisive element in the acceptance of relative clauses.

The traditional classification of the Old English strong verbs is crucially influenced by historical considerations. This is obvious; it is less obvious that the description is thereby distorted. It will be the purpose of this paper to show that a strictly synchronic approach results in a different analysis.

In one of his most perceptive essays, Otto Jespersen in 1929 explored the notion of ‘veiled language’. He noted that ‘round-about expressions’ were to be found in the popular speech of many nations, and he felt that they are ‘of interest to students of linguistic psychology as characteristic of one type of the popular mind’. Students of language have long known that taboo presents many problems, not the least of which is that taboo ought to be self-defeating. If a word is never spoken, it should die out in a generation; no doubt many words have been so lost. But taboo is usually only partial—perhaps it exists to be broken. In most cultures there are individuals who play the role of rogue; and it may even be conventional to arrange occasions on which it is expected that the taboos will be broken.

The Semitic imperfect as represented by Arabic has three patterns with respect to the vowel of the 2nd radical: (ya)ktal, (ya)ktul, (ya)ktil; thus, yašrabu ‘he drinks’, yaktubu ‘he writes’, yanzilu ‘he descends’. In Hebrew, these patterns are (yi)ktal, (yi)ktol, (yi)ktel, with the vowels a, o, e respectively; thus, ‘he will study’, yišmor ‘he will watch’, ‘he will sit’. In the Ethiopian group, Geez (or Old Ethiopie) is known as the only language that had two patterns, namely corresponding to yaktal of Semitic, and going back to Semitic yaktul and yaktil, with the reduction of the short u and i of the 2nd radical to . These forms, however, are those of the jussive, not the imperfect indicative as in the other Semitic languages. The Geez jussive goes back to a perfect kätlä, the jussive to a perfect kätälä; thus, perfect läbsä ‘he put on a dress’, jussive perfect nägärä ‘he said’, jussive .

The purpose of this paper is to present the initial results of a study of certain regularities in the structure of written English words. Our objective will be to show that it is possible to extend the phonemic concepts of consonant, vowel, and syllable to written forms and that there is considerable utility in doing so. In particular, we shall show that a major proportion of the one-syllable words, graphemically defined, have the same part-of-speech assignments when checked against standard dictionaries. In this sense we shall claim that the one-syllable words form a part-of-speech class. We further conjecture that graphemic syllabification is intimately related to part-of-speech assignment in the set of all written English words.

Linguists have discussed the question whether certain of the Bantu languages employ consonant clusters, or whether all the syllables of those languages are of the pattern (C)V, with some of the consonants being phonetically complex. In order to have a neutral term which favors neither interpretation, I shall use Hockett's word onset to cover any and all consonantal material which precedes the vowel of a syllable.

A previous paper focused on a process of affixation operating on the Mezquital Otomi verb-root-initial consonant. In brief, this process involves a series of glottal elements (?, h, and voicing) fused with root-initial stops, and a series of palatal elements (y, ñ, and t) fused with root-initial glottal consonants, ? and h. The present paper describes other simulfixes to complete the discussion. Two other processes, prefixation and suffixation, are also described in relation to the verb nucleus.