E. SAPIR: The Status of Linguistics as a Science... 207 CARL DARLING BUCK: Words for World, Earth and Land, Sun.. 215 E. H. STURTEVANT: Some Hittite Words..... 228 EDITH FRANCES CLAFLIN: The Hypothesis of the Italo-Celtic Im personal Passive in -r. 232 LOUIS H. GRAY: The Ogham Genitive Singular in -AIS. 251 LINGUISTIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA Founded 1924 OFFICERS FOR 1929 President, PROFESSOR CHARLES H. GRANDGENT, Harvard University. Vice-President, PROFESSOR W. A. OLDFATHER, University of Illinois. Secretary and Treasurer, PROFESSOR ROLAND G. KENT, University of Pennsylvania. Executive Committee, the preceding, and PROFESSOR LEONARD BLOOMFIELD, University of Chicago. PROFESSOR FRANKLIN EDGERTON, Yale University. PROFESSOR EDWARD PROKOSCH, Yale University. Committee on Publications: Chairman and Editor: PROFESSOR GEORGE MELVILLE BOLLING, Ohio State University. To serve through 1929: PROFESSOR SAMUEL MOORE, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. To serve through 1930: PROFESSOR HANS KURATH, Ohio State University. To serve through 1931: PROFESSOR EDWARD SAPIR, University of Chicago. The Linguistic Society of America was founded in December, 1924, for the advancement of the scientific study of language. The Society plans to promote this aim by bringing students of language together in its meetings, and by publishing the fruits of research. It has established a quarterly journal, a series of language monographs, and a series of language dissertations; the last two will appear at irregular intervals, according to the material offered to the Committee on Publications and the funds available for the purpose. Members will receive all in return for the annual dues of Five Dollars. Membership in the Society is not restricted to professed scholars in linguistics. All persons, whether men or women, who are in sympathy with the objects of the Society, are invited to give it their assistance in furthering its work. Application for membership should be made to the Secretary, Professor Roland G. Kent, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. Entered as Second Class Matter at the Postoffice at Baltimore, Maryland. This Journal is published quarterly by the Linguistic Society of America. Members of the Society receive it without extra charge, three dollars of the annual dues being appropriated for this purpose; to others, its price is five dollars per annum. Subscriptions and other business communications should be addressed to Language, or to Roland G. Kent, Treasurer, L. S. A., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. Manuscripts for publication should be sent to George Melville Bolling, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. THE STATUS OF LINGUISTICS AS A SCIENCE1 E. SAPIR UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO [The long tried methods of Indo-European linguistics have proved themselves by the success with which they have been applied to other fields, for instance Central Algonkian and Athabaskan. An increasing interest in linguistics may be noted among workers in anthropology, culture history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. For all of them linguistics is of basic importance: its data and methods show better than those of any other discipline dealing with socialized behavior the possibility of a truly scientific study of society. Linguists should, on the other hand, become aware of what their science may mean for the interpretation of human conduct in general.] Linguistics may be said to have begun its scientific career with the comparative study and reconstruction of the Indo-European languages. In the course of their detailed researches Indo-European linguists have gradually developed a technique which is probably more nearly perfect than that of any other science dealing with man's institutions. Many of the formulations of comparative Indo-European linguistics have a neatness and a regularity which recall the formulae, or the so-called laws, of natural science. Historical and comparative linguistics has been built up chiefly on the basis of the hypothesis that sound changes, are regular and that most morphological readjustments in language follow as by-products in the wake of these regular phonetic developments. There are many who would be disposed to deny the psychological necessity of the regularity of sound change, but it remains true, as a matter of actual linguistic experience, that faith in such regularity has been the most successful approach to the historic problems of language. Why ( such regularities should be found and why it is necessary to assume regularity of sound change are questions that the average linguist is perhaps unable to answer satisfactorily. But it does not follow that he can expect to improve his methods by discarding well tested hypotheses and 1 Read at a joint meeting of the LINGUISTIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA, the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, and Sections H and L of the AMERICAN AssociATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, New York City, December 28, 1928. throwing the field open to all manner of psychological and sociological explanations that do not immediately tie up with what we actually know about the historical behavior of language. A psychological and a sociological interpretation of the kind of regularity in linguistic change with which students of language have long been familiar are indeed desirable and even necessary. But neither psychology nor sociology is in a position to tell linguistics what kinds of historical formulations the linguist is to make. At best these disciplines can but urge the linguist to concern himself in a more vital manner than heretofore with the problem of seeing linguistic history in the larger framework of human behavior in the individual and in society. The methods developed by the Indo-Europeanists have been applied with marked success to other groups of languages. It is abundantly clear that they apply just as rigorously to the unwritten primitive languages of Africa and America as to the better known forms of speech of the more sophisticated peoples. It is probably in the languages of these more cultured peoples that the fundamental regularity of linguistic processes has been most often crossed by the operation of such conflicting tendencies as borrowing from other languages, dialectic blending, and social differentiations of speech. The more we devote ourselves to the comparative study of the languages of a primitive linguistic stock, the more clearly we realize that phonetic law and analogical leveling are the only satisfactory key to the unravelling of the development of dialects and languages from a common base. Professor Leonard Bloomfield's experiences with Central Algonkian and my own with Athabaskan leave nothing to be desired in this respect and are a complete answer to those who find it difficult to accept the large scale regularity of the operation of all those unconscious linguistic forces which in their totality give us regular phonetic change and morphological readjustment on the basis of such change. It is not merely theoretically possible to predict the correctness of specific forms among unlettered peoples on the basis of such phonetic laws as have been worked out for them-such predictions are already on record in considerable number. There can be no doubt that the methods first developed in the field of Indo-European linguistics are destined to play a consistently important rôle in the study of all other groups of languages, and that it is through them and through their gradual extension that we can hope to arrive at significant historical inferences as to the remoter relations between groups of languages that show few superficial signs of a common origin. It is the main purpose of this paper, however, not to insist on what |