This is the first of two articles on the Cuzco dialect of Kechua, whose aim will be to sketch the grammatical structure of this language in as much detail as the recorded material permits. The study is based on the speech of Gabriel Escobar, a native speaker of Kechua born in Cuzco, Peru. Although the available data are insufficient for an exhaustive description and the present outline can be no more than tentative, it is believed that the system shown here will not be substantially changed by further investigation, but will only be amplified by the addition of new details.

Perhaps the most problematical feature of verbal usage in modern English is the alternation of simple and progressive forms. According to the traditional opinion, the progressive is intended to emphasize durative aspect; but while this emphasis, as well as the contrast it offers to that of the simple form, is well illustrated in such an example as While we were talking, the telephone rang, there are countless cases in which the peculiar force of the progressive is at first glance difficult to grasp. Such cases may be divided into two main groups.

In the process of comparing linguistic meaning-forms of languages which have proved to be related, one may find a small number of attractive comparisons exhibiting a correspondence which, if divided, would be subsumable under other already established correspondences. To account for this type of correspondence the comparatist may treat it (1) as resulting from a special condition within the proto-language, either the existence of a hitherto unidentified phoneme or cluster, or the existence of proto-doublets (i.e. synonymous and nearly homonymous meaning-forms), or (2) as appearing because of changes within the daughter languages other than phonetic change: analogy, or borrowing from another dialect or from a related language. The second alternative cannot be a solution for a hitherto unassigned correspondence found in a set of otherwise systematic comparisons (1) if the correspondence is found in a position not subject to the effects of analogy and (2) if two or more languages exhibit respectively the same (or identifiable) unanticipated correspondents in each case. Borrowing in great quantity from other dialects or from related languages might produce such an effect if only one language were concerned, but it is hardly likely to do so in two languages independently.

[The aural evaluation of vowel sounds is a basic problem in both experimental and applied phonetics. This paper deals with the judgment of phonetic equivalence in the elementary case of sustained vowels. The definition of the phonetic value of vowels in terms of physiological and acoustical dimensions is considered, and the conventional vowel diagram is discussed as a means of representing vowel sounds in a multidimensional phonetic space.]

[The following objective report on certain aspects of linguistic study in the Soviet Union is printed here for the information of American scholars. The author has carefully refrained from injecting his personal views into what he intended as a purely factual account; but it may be proper to remark, by way of editorial comment and summary, that although the recent repudiation of Marr by Soviet linguists is undeniably a step in the right direction, so long as that repudiation remains a matter of dogma, promulgated by official edict, it is not yet a step from darkness into the light.—The Editor]