The Hittite documents show many instances of an interchange of the vowels e and a. Since the variation is not uniform, and neither vowel of the pair is restricted to any phonetic surroundings or morphological categories, we must apparently assume several causes, and sound method requires the separate treatment of groups of words which show parallel phenomena. In this paper I propose to discuss the variation in monosyllabic verbal roots which end in a consonant.

Any addition to our scanty store of Old Persian inscriptions is certain to yield something of interest, and this is true of the new Darius inscription published by Sidney Smith in JRAS, 1926, 433 ff. It is in the usual trilingual versions, and occurs in duplicate on a gold and a silver tablet. These presumably belonged to a series of three or more (gold, silver, and baser materials), such as have been unearthed in foundation deposits. The editor gives a copy made from a photograph of the gold tablet, and restorations of the text (of the Elamite version) from a photograph of the silver tablet. A photograph of the gold tablet was received from a dealer by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and I have used this.

Initial h before I, n, r disappeared in ONorw. at a preliterary date but was regularly retained in Olcel. (cf. Noreen §289). In Olcel. this initial h- was often lost, or an initial h- was often added to I, n, r, through association between words having initial hl, hn, hr and words having initial l, n, r. This associative process was due to resemblance in meaning or in form aside from the initial consonants in question. After the loss or the accretion of initial h- had become established between certain words or word groups there developed a general feeling of uncertainty as to whether a word should begin with hl or l, hn or n, hr or r. Most cases of this type of general confusion are naturally found in the Late Olcel. period, yet several instances may be cited in the classical period; which shows that the process was even then well under way. For the classical period I may mention the following examples: Hniflungr (Elder Edda) for Niflungr, rār ‘damp’ (Elder Edda) for hrār, hrjā for rjā ‘wrestle’; for the Late Olcel. period hnezla (for nezla) ‘button loop’, hniᵭra (for niᵭra) ‘to lower’, reᵭr (for hreᵭr) ‘genitals’, hreifr (for reifr) ‘glad’, hrifsa (for rifsa) ‘to rob’, ringja (for hringja) ‘a round pail’.

The verbs of the Hittite hi-conjugation fall into three classes according to the final sound of the stem. In spite of more or less irregularity in each class, the following paradigms will represent the usual types of conjugation.

Of special interest in the Romance of Gaul and Spain are the descendants of catellus and caniculus. Within each group, as we shall see, there is considerable fluidity of sense, to such a degree that they come to be used interchangeably for ‘kitten’ and ‘puppy.‘ Of this state of affairs, the grammarians and lexicographers seem to be unaware.

The difference between the present indicative active personal endings in the athematic and thematic conjugations is self-evident, as in Greek (Doric) in contrast with . It is also recognised that the Old Irish verb shows the same phenomenon in its ‘absolute’ and ‘conjunct’ forms (without and with preverbs respectively), as berim < ∗bheremi and -biur < ∗bherō.

The explanation of the Italic imperfects in *-fām Lat. -bam which is commonly accepted in the hand books is not without its difficulties, although it has many points in its favor. It is true that the derivation of e.g. legēbam from a participial or infinitival form of lego plus *bhu̯ā-m, the old injunctive of IE *bheu-, is unobjectionable from the phonetic point of view, and that both the second syllable of Osc. fu-fans and Lat. -bam -bās, etc., may without the slightest hesitation be derived from *bhu̯ā-m. It is also true that the derivation of the formation from one of the most common of IE roots and the analogy of periphrastic imperfects of the type of Engl, was reading are additional favoring considerations. Nevertheless there are two very serious difficulties which make it hard to agree with this hypothesis in its received form.

There are in Aleut three endings to indicate the number of nouns: x' for the singular, x for the dual, and n (in the Atka dialect, s) for the plural.

The concept of time in relation to action finds expression in the verbal forms of a great many, although not all, languages. ‘In English we have made up our minds that all action must be conceived of in reference to three standard times’,—the present, the past, and the future. Of these three, the devices for the expression of the future—their origin, development, and present use—receive from our grammarians the least satisfactory treatment.

It is disputed whether Messapic is to be classed with the centum-languages or with the satem-languages. Discussion of this problem has been unduly influenced by comparison with Albanian (a satem-language) and by the commonly made assumption that Albanian can only be the modern representative of an ancient Illyrian dialect. It is at least clear that Illyrian did not represent the IE palatal stops by sibilants, see Hirt, Indogermanen 2.609, and ‘Stellung des Illayrischen’ in Festschrift für Kiepert 181ff. (1894) where Kretschmer's view to the contrary is criticised. The fact that Messapic appears on the available evidence to have nothing corresponding to the labiovelars or labials of the centum-languages (Lat. quinque, Gr. πϵμπτós: Alb. pes∈) that represent the IE velar stops (*penku̯e), would seem to make it a priori likely that the palatals should have been treated as in the satem-languages. But the conclusion is not inevitable. It is probable that Venetic, which was also an ancient Illyrian dialect, neither labialised the velars nor sibilised the palatals; and it has been suggested accordingly that Venetic belongs to a stratum of IE speech earlier than the cleavage into centum-dialects and satem-dialects, see Conway, Annual Brit. Sch. at Athens 8.152 (1901–2).

Professor G. P. Krapp makes an attractive case for his derivation of darn, darned in the brief essay on this word in his recent The English Language in America. He discards the usual explanation that darn is a variant or minced form of damn, and believes that, although it now stands in intimate relation to damn, it had an independent origin. He takes as his starting point the Old English adjective dierne, ‘secret,‘ Middle English derne, Elizabethan dern, and assumes a transition from a descriptive adjective or adverb to an imprecation. The adjective took on, he thinks, the form of a participial adjective, and thence developed verbal usage. Our occasional mild dern would then represent a more basic form than the commoner darn.

Numerals share with pronouns the honor of being the best criteria of linguistic relationship; and yet among the names of the digits we find more exceptions to the principle of regular phonetic development, probably, than anywhere else in an equal group of unquestioned cognates. The exceptions arise, in the main, from the fact that the words are in use so closely associated with one another that they affect one another's forms.

In no respect perhaps do the Southern and Midland Middle English texts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries show greater differences than in the loss or retention of the final n of unstressed inflectional syllables. Disregarding all but the gross differences, we can recognise three types of distribution to one or the other of which the various texts tend, in the roughest way and in varying degrees, to conform. These three types of distribution may be illustrated by the Owl and the Nightingale, the Cotton Nero A 14 text of the Ancren Riwle, and the London English of Chaucer.

Lat. auster ‘south wind; south’, austrālis ‘southern’: aurōra, etc., is a well established etymology, but not sufficiently explained. Both groups of words may be referred to a base *awes- or perhaps rather *ēwes- (with a- from ǝ), with the primary meaning ‘wave, roll, rise’, descriptive of fire and water. Hence *austro- was used both of the east, orient, in reference to the rising of the sun, and of the south, or rather of the south wind, as the rain-bearer, storm-bringer, thawer. For Lat. auster is described as fulmine pollens (Lucr. 5. 744), turbidus (Hor. Od. 3. 3. 4), nullius (Prop. 2. 15, 56), humidus (Virg., G 1. 462), pluvius (Ovid, M 1. 66), and also as frigidus, hibernus, validus, vehemens. We may therefore compare Skt. oṣárn ‘geschwind; sogleich’, Swed. yster ‘sehr lebhaft, unbändig’, ORG ustar ‘gierig’, ustr ‘Fleiss’; Norw. ӯr ‘ausgelassen’, Swiss ūr, ūrig ‘stürmisch (von Wetter), wild, zornig’, Bav. eurisch ‘mürrisch’ (or these with IE r); Norw. ӯsja ‘swarm out, of small animals’, usta ‘stöbern’ (of dust or rain), usle ‘coaldust’, ON usti ‘glowing ashes’, ysja ‘fire’, Lat. ūro, Skt. uṣmā 'Hitze, Glut, Dampf, etc.; vāsa-h 'Wolgeruch', Swed. ōs 'Dunst, Geruch,' OE wōs 'moisture, juice', MLG wōs ‘Absud, Brühe, Most’, wasem ‘Wasserdampf, Dunst’, OHG wasulun ‘pluviis’, Norw. vaslast ‘nass werden, fliessen’.

With the main points made by Professor Whatmough in Language 3.105–9, as to the etymology and meaning of the Oscan word deketāsio-, a title of magistrates at Nola and at Abella, I am in hearty agreement. In two minor details only I should like to supplement or modify what he says.

Justifying his statement that Jean Renart, the author of Le Lai de l'Ombre, also wrote L'Escoufle and Guillaume de Dole, Bédier says: ‘Voici, à l'appui de notre opinion, une liste de quinze remarques’. One of the fifteen points discussed is as follows: ‘Il se sot mout bien avoir. Expression qui signifie “savoir bien tenir son rang”. Elle reparaît par deux fois dans Guillaume de Dole (v. 570 et v. 2143). Il faut qu'elle soit peu usuelle, puisque l'éditeur de ce roman a voulu corriger l'un des deux passages où il la rencontrait.'