With regard to the vowel of the final syllable, Hesychius offers a gloss K · ‘E ‘H, and on this basis some modern scholars distinguish a god Kandaulas and a king Kandaules. I think that the validity of this distinction may be doubted. Hipponax’ vocative K is the proper form to K, cf. . So Hesychius, if his copyists are not at fault, has either formed the nominative wrongly from K or drawn on a non-Ionic source. For Ionic we need reckon with K and with nothing else.

The magistrates described as degetasiús (n. pl. masc.) at Nola (Conway ID 93, cf. 94 = von Planta 124, 125) and as deketasiúí (dat. sg. masc.) at Abella (Conway 95 a 5 = von Planta 127) have generally been dismissed with a non liquet as to their precise functions. It is unfortunate that the etymology of their title is equally uncertain; for if that were precisely known it would, presumably, illuminate the nature of their office. But, the case being reversed, is it not reasonable to suppose that new light concerning the duties of a meddix degetasis would serve to establish, at least as being definitely preferable, one of the alternative etymologies? In etymology meaning is, after all, no less important than sound-change and word-formation. Buck (Gram. 229), after pointing out that a connection with either Lat. decem or decens is phonologically and morphologically possible, went on to add that there is a reference in the title ‘to some organisation of the city's territory or population of which we have no precise knowledge’; and, similarly, Brugmann (IF 11.110), criticising the proposed connection with decem, objected to it, declaring its originator Bronisch ‘eine derartige Bezeichnung der meddices nicht rechtfertigen zu können’. It is exactly this point which the present note is meant to elucidate.

In the following notes I shall study the more important linguistic phenomena that are to be found in my Cuentos populares españoles, the most abundant and most important collection of Spanish folk-tales that has ever been collected and published. The three volumes that contain the folk-tales offer us 280 dialectic versions of some 200 different tales representative of 24 of the 49 provinces of Spain and collected from 88 different towns, villages, and localities from the following regions of north, central, and southern Spain: La Montaña, Asturias, León, Castilla la Vieja, Castilla la Nueva, Andalucía, La Mancha, and Estremadura. About one third of the materials are from Old Castile. All the folk-tales, with the exception of those from Asturias, were collected and taken down (frequently in phonetic script) by myself. The Asturian folk-tales (eleven in number) are the only materials in the entire collection that may be called non-Castilian and for that reason they will not enter into our present linguistic studies. The linguistic materials that are to be the object of our study are, therefore, fundamentally and essentially Castilian materials from Old and New Castile and from the southern Spanish regions that have been castilianized since the XIIth century when these regions began to be recaptured from the Arabs, and they do not, in general, represent any of the special linguistic characteristics of Asturian, Galician, Leonese, Aragonese, Valencian, Portuguese or Catalonian. Andalusian Spanish shows, to be sure, certain linguistic traits that appear to separate it from the Castilian of the northern and central regions, but many of these traits are after all developments of phenomena that had their beginnings in Castile.

The relationship of Hittite and Indo-European has been recognized chiefly on the basis of certain correspondences in inflectional terminations, suffixes, and pronouns. Indo-European etymologies have, to be sure, been suggested for a considerable number of Hittite words, but a large proportion of these etymologies are clearly unsound and even those which are most plausible have never been worked into the sort of consistent system which could bring conviction to those who understand sound etymological method.

The material of Linguistic Science is human utterance, and for its work the ideal medium is viva voce communication. Rather, this would be the case, did not factors of time and space greatly restrict its applicability. Human utterance is so fleeting that even the field-worker placed most fortunately as he is in the immediate presence of his material, must seek to hold this transitory phenomenon—to make an artificial record of it for re-examination.