The basic tenet of Indo-Europeanists with regard to personal proper names has been, stated briefly, that the typical Indo-European name is a dithematic compound, as exemplified most eminently by many Indic, Greek, and Germanic names. Any name that is not compounded in a like manner, it is asserted, is either actually a shortened hypocoristic form of an original dithematic name, or is some sort of nickname or hybrid—at any rate not a genuine original. If indeed the theory went only so far as to state that the predominant feature of a great number of Indo-European names, particularly in Indic, Greek, and Germanic, is a form of composition resulting largely in the dithematic onomastic type, no serious objection could be raised. But the creators and propagators of this theory were obviously determined to arrive at some more comprehensively valid rule. Of course, this rule was bound to include exceptions; but not even the existence of an abnormally great number of exceptions seemed to arouse any grave doubts as to the universal applicability of the rule, nor was it deemed necessary on their account to investigate the causes of the divergencies.

We aim in this paper to replace by a unified, systematic theory the heterogeneous and incomplete methods hitherto offered for determining IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENTS (hereafter abbreviated IC, plural ICs). The unifying basis is furnished by the famous concept of patterning, applied repeatedly and in divers special forms.

[The three main types of Indo-European roots follow one and the same pattern in their vowel alternation; the differences they present historically must be the result of phonetic changes. The monosyllabic long-vowel roots (heavy bases) are generally recognized as a special case of the short-vowel roots. In the ablaut system of dissyllabic roots, the second syllable seems to be ignored. It must have arisen either (1) from vocalization of an old laryngeal, or (2) from metathesis of the full vowel in a number of old monosyllabic roots containing a sonant.]

This paper develops further the theory of morphemic analysis presented by Zellig S. Harris in 1942. Morphemic analysis is the operation by which the analyst isolates minimum meaningful elements in the utterances of a language, and decides which occurrences of such elements shall be regarded as occurrences of ‘the same’ element.

In discussing another problem, Monro 141–2 warns us against allowing ourselves to be led ‘into the fallacy of thinking that relations which are distinct to us, because expressed by different language, were distinctly conceived by those who expressed them all in the same way;—the fallacy, in short, of supposing the distinctions of thought to be prior to the language which embodies them.‘ The warning seems to me of special value in dealing with my present problem.

[Skt. adáḥ ‘illud’ is in reality adó = *adáu with the same *-au that is contained in asáu (= ). Appendix: Pāli dhītā- ‘daughter’ and ghara- ‘house’.]

The indefinite pronoun, ὁ ἡ τὸ δϵῖνα ‘so-and-so’, like other Greek pronominal stems (cf. αὐτvός, ἐκϵῖνος) is difficult to analyze, and even more difficult to etymologize. It has been much discussed in the literature and a number of ingenious suggestions have been made; nonetheless, as discerning a judge as Gustav Meyer noted long ago that the word was ‘in Ursprung and Bildung dunkel’ and concluded his analysis with a non-committal ‘non liquet’.

The following paragraphs attempt to give a partial phonemic analysis of modern standard German. §1 establishes the segmental phonemes that are needed to describe utterances of only one syllable. §2 discusses the role that stress plays in German, describes the effect of stress on the segmental phonemes already established, and adds one new segmental phoneme (ž) which does not occur in monosyllabic utterances. §3 describes the inadequacies of this phonemic analysis, and shows how they may be removed either by giving phonemic status to a number of sounds which are not phonemic in monosyllabic utterances, or by assuming a segmental phoneme of open juncture. §4 gives the reasons why the present writer considers it preferable to assume a phoneme of open juncture. §5 discusses a possible second type of juncture, for which no explanation is offered.

In the treatment of IE s, the insular Celtic languages share in general the peculiarities of Iranian and Greek, where the s-sound was characteristically changed into an aspirate in certain specified positions, and was further liable to disappear. In Irish, however, initial s remained (lenited ṡ, eventually h). The rule for insular Celtic may be stated briefly as follows: (1) Initially before a vowel, IE s remained in Irish and became h in Brittonic. (2) Between vowels, it was eventually dropped in Irish and became h in Brittonic, but was lost here also if the preceding vowel was stressed (cf. further below). (3) In final position, it probably resulted in aspiration, as appears from later sandhi forms, although no trace of it appears in the orthography of the older insular dialects. In other cases, such as before or after another consonant, the s-sound as a rule remained or was fused with such a consonant into a new sound; e.g. -st- > -ss-, -si- > -ll-.

[Two allophones of Germanic k became separate phonemes after the i-umlaut had changed the distribution of palatal vowels in Proto-Old-English. Not the phonetic development of palatal [k'], but the distributional change involving velar [k] caused the completion of the phonemic split.]

One of the European scholars that we have been fortunate enough to attract to this country is Giuliano Bonfante. The great importance of such newcomers for American scholarship is largely based upon the different scholastic traditions that they bring to us. Bonfante, for example, was trained in the Italian school of linguistics—neolinguistica, they call it—which was developed in sharp opposition to the doctrines of the German neogrammarians of the past seventy-five years or so. This neolinguistic method has until recently remained almost entirely unknown on this side of the ocean, and Bonfante's energetic support of it cannot fail to do us good.

[It is well established that some assibilation of Germanic k occurred in Northumbrian as in other dialects of English, but the extent to which non-initial k was affected has remained open to question. A study of the complete place-name material indicates that in the north of England k was retained as a stop in final position. In the county of Northumberland only, medial k was assibilated before i/j, and in the sequence -ik- + palatal vowel; elsewhere in the North medial k was in all situations retained as a stop.]