[In the actor-action-goal construction and in the character-substance (or modifier-noun) construction, Old English used taxemes of selection (inflected forms) to distinguish between actor (subject) and goal (object), and to indicate the direction of modification. The development of English has been away from the use of taxemes of selection with non-distinctive and connotative word-order, toward the use of taxemes of order operating practically without the aid of other devices. The patterns of the Modern English use seem to have been established by the middle of the 15th century.]

The purpose of this paper is to describe the accent and quantity systems of the Serbo-Croatian literary language as they function on the synchronic phonological plane, without considerations of morphology or of linguistic history, these being other and separate problems.

The description is based on data presented in the standard works, and on my own observations during a month in Yugoslavia in the summer of 1938.

[Doubled consonant symbols in Hurrian syllabic writing indicate two different qualities: in certain cases voicelessness (as in Hittite), in other cases actual length. See the summary at the end of the article.]

[Like the other compounds of the root ag-, the OIr. verb imm·aig should regularly form a suppletivistic future imm·ebla from the stem ebl-. Though imm·ebla actually occurs in a rhetorical text, its identification hitherto has been obscured by tmesis.]

[The historical status of MnE [i] is problematical. On presumptive and orthoepistical grounds, most authorities believe the sound was always [i]; some, notably Luick and Sweet, that an original [i], first partly lowered to [i] in late ME, was completely lowered in EMnE. Spelling and rhyme evidence, here first cited, demonstrates the retention of the stage [i], on occasion, until circa 1800. The uniform [i] of MnE seems to be due to the phonologization of one of two EMnE variants, probably as a result of phonemic proximity.]

In Language 15.105 Professor Rositzke draws attention to the question of the effect of the initial consonant upon the duration of the vowel which follows it. There is a tendency in some quarters to find that initial voiced consonants are followed by longer vowels than are initial voiceless consonants, and to seek to explain this as a 'natural physiological compensation between stop-energy and vowel duration', with the implication that the voiced consonant is weaker and hence followed by a longer vowel, by way of ‘compensation’.

The purpose of this paper is to show the probable point (or points) of contact between the strong and the weak verbal systems, which resulted in the development of a new analogical weak preterite form with dental suffix (which either existed alongside the original strong form or entirely displaced it). Cases of borrowing from an already existent weak verb (such as sϕkta ‘sank’ for sǫkk, hangða ‘hung’ for hekk) will therefore be omitted. It is, however, often doubtful whether the weak preterite was thus borrowed or was due to association between the strong and the weak verbal systems.

[A morphological and syntactic analysis of Ḫurrian verb forms reveals three verbal types: an action-verb (interpreted as active, in opposition to Speiser) and two kinds of impersonal-intransitive verb. See the concluding paragraphs.]

Caxambas Pass is the name of a stream that divides Marco Island from Cape Romano, off the southwestern coast of Florida. A modern hamlet on the island is also called Caxambas. The stream was formerly designated as a bay, and the variant Caximbas was likewise applied to a river on the mainland in this vicinity.

In Lang. 16.12–6, I indicated that alongside of som, cases occurred where sa was also employed in archaic Irish as the enclitic emphasizing pronoun of the third person masculine and neuter. After citing several instances that seemed to me reasonably certain, I quoted a few examples which were open to question. Among these, I included focicertsa from the unpublished version of the Bruiden Átha Í in the Yellow Book of Lecan, and I added (16.15) that Kuno Meyer regarded it as ‘a scribal error for fo·cicherr, though it should be noted that in the recension printed from Stowe MS 992 sum apparently replaces sa’.

Ital. madrigale ‘madrigal’ has, at an earlier date, been derived from mandra ‘herd’ and other etyma; the etymology which has received acceptance in most quarters has been that from matricale (carmen) '(song) in the mother tongue or vernacular'. As a recent attempt has been made to revive the Renaissance derivation from materiale ‘coarse > bastard (poetical form)‘, it may be of value to call attention to the arguments against this etymon and in favor of matricale.

[To the final syllable of the roots or radical themes of its verbs Muskogee applies three types of internal modification: quantitative ablaut, tonal ablaut, and infixation. By means of these processes each verbal root or theme derives five stems or 'principal parts'. These are distinguished primarily on the basis of aspectival categories and secondarily on the basis of tense categories.]

In LANG. 11.140-7 some notes were presented on the English dialect of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. On pp. 146-7 there was given a handful of words still in more or less general use which are survivals of the original German speech of the inhabitants of this town. Recently another interesting word which still preserves great vitality has returned to my memory.

1. Māl ‘speech’ < *maþla. According to the orthodox view þ disappeared without change before l. According to Sievers þ was first shifted to χ > h, as in WGmc., with loss of h before l; cf. *maþl > *maχl > *mahl > ON māl: OHG OS mahal. It is certain that in ON þ did disappear without the intermediate shift to χ > h after a long radical vowel, thus in *nāþlu > nǭl ‘needle’ = Goth. nēþla, where in WGmc. this loss did not occur (OE nǣdl, OFris. nēdle, OS nādla, OHG nādala). If ON þ after a short radical vowel underwent the shift in question, we should expect the shift to have taken place under the same conditions in WGmc. According to Sievers WGmc. þl remained wherever the l continued unvoiced, but was shifted to χl > hl wherever the l became voiced: thus nom. sg. *maþl (with voiceless l) but gen. sg. *mahles (with voiced l due to the following vowel); the type of OHG mahal, beside madal = OE mæÐel, he explains as due to the influence of the verbal form mahalen < *mahali̯en < *mahali̯an. That these conditions do not hold for ON is apparent from the example of *maþliÐō > *mǣlþa > mælta, for if the l before the vowel i in *maþliÐō had become voiced we should have expected a form *mǣlÐa > *mǣlda. This discrepancy between North and West Gmc. led Sievers to assume that ON þ before l in accented syllables was everywhere shifted to χ > h, i.e. without the restrictions characteristic of WGmc. But since this hypothesis has no factual support and is inconsistent with his theory regarding WGmc. conditions, there is no necessity for accepting it, especially as it in no way invalidates the orthodox view.