Of the various arguments advanced by Austin (Lang. 18.22–5) for regarding Armenian as an Anatolian language, undoubtedly the strongest is his brilliant interpretation of initial h in a number of Armenian words as the continuant of an IH laryngeal. Since in the present state of our knowledge the varying development of the laryngeals in Anatolian and IE proper is the chief phonological canon by which the two branches are distinguished, this point alone goes far in establishing Armenian as Anatolian. The only weakness of this argument, perhaps, is that, in its treatment of post-vocalic laryngeals, Armenian seems to follow the pattern of IE proper, rather than of Hittite.

1. The Syllabic Phonemes of English by Trager and Bloch (Lang. 17.223–46) is an attempt to set forth a partial phonemic analysis of American English. The analysis, though partial, is ambitious; it displays thoughtful ingenuity and confident independence; and its conclusions are in some particulars spectacular. It is accordingly in order to consider whether the procedures of analysis represent sound and fruitful techniques. If they do, the scope of linguistic investigation has been substantially broadened; if not, they are seductive but dangerous.

Benjamin Lee Whorf died on July 26, 1941, at his home in Wethersfield, Connecticut, after an illness of several months; he was 44 years old. Whorf was trained as an engineer, having graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1918; at the time of his death he was an assistant secretary of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. His work in linguistics began about 1928, with an interest in the decipherment of Maya; this led to his studying modern Mayan and Aztec, and thence to a deep penetration of the field of American Indian and general linguistics. In 1930 Whorf held a Social Science Research Council grant, under which he recorded the Aztec dialect of Milpa Alta, Mexico. In 1936 and 1937 he was a research fellow at Yale, and the association with Edward Sapir during those years was, in his own opinion, the most important influence on his linguistic thinking.