[The so-called passive of videō is in reality an old middle, corresponding to Homeric ∊ἴδ∊ται, ἰδέσθαι and meaning from prehistoric times ‘seem, appear’. The meaning ‘be seen’ is late, secondary, and very rare. This view, besides being in consonance with the evidence of other IE languages having verbs derived from the base *weid-, is confirmed by the occurrence in early Latin of a deponent form of videō (Curculio 260–1; Epidicus 61–2). The middle verb vidērī therefore illustrates and supports the writer's theory (AJP 48.157–75) that ‘the Latin passive is essentially a middle voice’.]

[The IE dh-determinative effects a consistent modification of meaning in Germanic. Basically this is in nouns formed from transitive roots a past passive modification, in nouns formed from intransitive roots and in verbs a modification caused by previous action.]

Jellinek has presented lists of the Gothic consonant-clusters (excluding accidental clusters resulting from compounding, such as tg), with notations of which clusters are found in only one word, but with no other remarks on frequency of occurrence. Dewey has gone a step further with English consonant-clusters: from his tables we learn how many times each cluster was found in his 100,000 words of sample texts. A different kind of frequency is reported in the Twaddell study of one- and two-syllable German words: having analysed the uncompounded words in a lexicon, he reports the number of different forms in which each cluster was found. The Jellinek report gives us no statistical picture in the sense intended here; the Dewey count gives us a statistical picture of TEXT frequencies; the Twaddell count, of LIST frequencies.

[Arguments in favor of an ‘Austric’ family of languages are here tested and rejected as inadequate.]

One of the principal criteria whereby the Apachean languages may be divided into two main sub-stocks is the development of Primitive Athapaskan *t. This sound is retained in Navaho, San Carlos, Chiricahua, and Mescalero, but becomes k in Jicarilla and Lipan (thus falling together with PA *k) and k (before the vowels a and o) or č (before the vowels e and i) in Kiowa-Apache. The purpose of this paper is to describe the phonetic circumstances attendant upon these shifts, circumstances which illustrate rather well the relationship between phonetic change—changes in sound-producing habits which do not alter the phonemic system of a language—and phonemic change. Changes in the pronunciation of PA *t have probably taken place in all the Apachean languages, but in only three of these languages (viz. Jicarilla, Lipan, and Kiowa-Apache) have the changes resulted in a disturbance of the phonemic system.

[The paper examines the situations in which semivowels occur in specific languages, analyzes these situations phonemically, and generalizes from the examples.]

While the first five classes of the strong verb have e/o-gradation of the root, the sixth class and also the reduplicated verbs represent, in addition to the e/o-gradation, other possibilities. From the point of view of IE grammar, the verbs of the sixth class may be divided into four groups. The first group comprises ā- and ō-bases; this IE ā or ō appears in the Germanic preterite (as ō), while the present shows weakened vowel-grade ə = Gmc. a (type 1): *dh(e)rāgh- WP 1.875: OE dragan; *lāb- 2.383: OHG laffan; *qlāt- 1.489: OE hladan; *sāg- 2.449: OE sacan; *s(e)qābh- 2.559: OE sceafan; *s(e)qāb- 2.562: OE scieppan; *st(h)ā- 2.603: OE standan; *ṷādh- 1.217: OE wadan; *bhōg- 2.187: OE bacan; *qlōq- 1.496: OE hliehhan.