After all delimitations have been reckoned with, and all the readjustments have been effected, there remains for philology a well-defined place and task. Language is its chief material. The life-thought of a people is its chief object of study. History, geography, art, antiquities, manners and beliefs, institutions and government,—all of these it must understand and utilize for its interpretations, but it is through language as the open window that it must look straight in upon the life and with the straight, whole look of sympathy learn to comprehend and relive it.

At the conclusion of the address Professor Merrill reported for the committee on organization, and the following constitution was adopted.

CONSTITUTION OF THE PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF THE

PACIFIC COAST.

ARTICLE I.-NAME AND OBJECT.

I. This Society shall be known as "The Philological Association of the Pacific Coast."

2. Its object shall be the advancement and diffusion of philological knowledge.

ARTICLE II. - OFFICERS.

1. The officers shall be a President, two Vice-Presidents, and a SecretaryTreasurer.

2. There shall be an Executive Committee of eight, composed of the above officers and four members of the Association.

3. All the above officers shall be elected at the last session of each annual meeting.

ARTICLE III. — MEETINGS.

1. There shall be an annual meeting of the Association in the city of San Francisco, or at such other place as at a preceding annual meeting shall be determined upon.

2. At the annual meeting the Executive Committee shall present an annual report of the progress of the Association.

3. The general arrangements of the proceedings of the annual meeting shall be directed by the Executive Committee.

4. Special meetings may be held at the call of the Executive Committee, when and where they may decide.

ARTICLE IV.- MEMBERS.

1. Any one interested in philological studies may become a member of the Association by a vote of the Executive Committee and the payment of five dollars as initiation fee, which initiation fee shall be considered the first regular annual fee.

2. There shall be an annual fee of three dollars from each member, failure in payment of which for two years shall ipso facto cause the membership to cease.

3. Any person may become a life member of the Association by the payment of fifty dollars to its treasury, and by a vote of the Executive Committee.

ARTICLE V. SUNDRIES.

1. All papers intended to be read before the Association must be approved by the Executive Committee before reading, and their decision regarding such papers shall be final.

2. Publications of the Association, of whatever kind, shall be made only under the authorization of the Executive Committee.

ARTICLE VI. - AMENDMENTS.

Amendments to the Constitution may be made by a vote of two-thirds of those present at any regular meeting subsequent to that in which they have been proposed.

The Committee recommended further that a committee of three be appointed by the Chair to nominate officers for the ensuing year, that another committee of three be appointed to report on the time and place of the next meeting, and that the Executive Committee to be chosen be authorized to communicate with the officers of the American Philological Association concerning terms of affiliation with. that body.

Upon motion of Professor Bradley the report of the Committee was adopted.

The Chair announced the following committees :

Nomination of Officers: Professors Pease, Gayley, and Dr. Gamble. Time and Place of Meeting: Professors Fairclough, Senger, and Mr. James.

The meeting then adjourned.

THIRD SESSION.

The third session was called to order by the Chair on Saturday, December 20, 1899, at 10.15 A.M.

10. The use of le, la, les, before me, te, vous, nous, lui, leur in Old French, by Professor O. M. Johnston, of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.

This paper has been published in Modern Language Notes, XV. 1-6.

II. Pleonastic Formative Elements in the Semitic Languages, by Professor Max L. Margolis, of the University of California.

Mixed forms, or forms with pleonastic formative elements, arise through "contamination." Two classes may be distinguished: (1) forms with cumulated suffixes (eg. Engl. fruit-er-er); (2) forms which in themselves, unencumbered by any suffix, convey the idea which the superadded suffix is visibly to bring out (eg. Engl. folk-s). In the Semitic languages we equally meet with both classes. First Class: (a) stem formation, e.g. Eth. ta-n-tôlé a "he was covered"; late Hebr. ni-t-nabe(') "he prophesied "; (b) suffixes ān and i, e.g. Arab. fäkih-ān-i "fruiterer"; Hebr. kaḍm-ōn-i "foremost, Eastern"; Aram. raḥăm-ān-ī “compassionate"; (c) double feminine ending, e.g. Hebr. råm-t-å(h) “she threw" (older form ram-at-at); (d) double plural ending, e.g. Hebr. båm-ōṭ-ē "high places." Second Class: (a) to an "inner" adjective the suffix an may be added, e.g. Arab. sakr-ān(u) “drunk” (sakr(un), shortened from sakir (un), means the same); (b) infinitives with pleonastic prefixes or suffixes, eg. Arab. ma-ʼkal(un) ‘eating"; ta-zuāl(un) "ceasing"; 'ibād-at(un) "service"; lahab-ān(u) by the side of lahab(un) “ burning"; Hebr. n'ur-īm “youth"; (c) inner feminines, e.g. Eth. ḥadās fem. of ḥadīs "new" becomes in Hebr. ḥăḍåš-å(h) (older form: hadas-at; from which masc. ḥådås is a back formation); (d) collectives, e.g. Arab. labin(un) “bricks” (labin-at(un) is nomen unitatis) becomes in Hebr. lben-im; (e) broken plurals, e.g. Arab. riğāl-āt(un) “men” (plural of a plural); hence Hebr. mlâk-īm "kings."

12. The Sources of Corneille's Tragedy La Mort de Pompée, by Professor John E. Matzke, of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. This paper has been published in Mod. Lang. Notes, XV. 142-152.

13. The Charge of έevía in the Old Comedy, by Professor A. T. Murray, of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.

No abstract of this paper is available.

14. Cicero's use of the Imperfect and Pluperfect Subjunctive in si-clauses, by Dr. H. C. Nutting, of the University of California.

Two points only, suggested by a study of this topic, are emphasized: (a) the essence of a condition is not necessarily inherent in the verb. This is well illustrated by such a sentence as de Leg. Agr. II. 3,6: Quodsi solus in discrimen aliquod adducerer, ferrem, Quirites, animo aequiore; here, though the conditional sentence is doubtless contrary to fact, Cicero does not mean to imply that the action of the verb is not taking place, the unreality of the condition lies in the word solus. This is indicated formally by the emphatic position of the word, and, doubtless, by stress of voice in speaking.

On the basis of the fact that language generally tends to allow unemphatic words to drop away, leaving the emphatic in possession of the field, the theory is advanced that we here have the key to the explanation of that class of form

ally simple sentences 'that imply a condition in a word or phrase'; e.g. p. Plancio 37, 90; mortem me timuisse dicis. Ego vero ne inmortalitatem quidem contra rem publicam accipiendam putarem. . . . This is, logically, a complex sentence; if the emphatic words were expanded into a si-clause, the stress would be not on the verb, but on inmortalitas. The essence of the condition is thus retained in the formally simple sentence.

(b) Temporal relations are reflected rather than possessed by conditions contrary to fact. The imperfect subjunctive reflects or is opposed to (1) a general truth, (2) a reality somewhat time-limited but not confined to the immediate present, (3) a reality of the immediate present; this last variety is much less frequently met than is generally supposed. In the same way the pluperfect reflects past time, as aorist and true perfect.

This paper appears in full in the American Journal of Philology, XXI. 260-273.

15. Commands and Prohibitions in Horace, by Dr. Clifton Price, of the University of California.

The aim of the paper, in general, was to show the superior ability of the Latin, as compared with other languages, to express commands and prohibitions, and, in particular, to illustrate this versatility by the most tactful of Latin writers— Horace.

In the first place, the four hundred and sixteen cases of the imperative in Horace were classified according to tense and person and then according to the nature of the writing (odes, satires, and epistles) in which they appear. Some interesting statistics were obtained relative to Horace's feeling for the future imperative as compared with the present imperative and present subjunctive, and the frequency of the future imperative in the more colloquial parts. There followed a discussion of the positions taken by Krarup (De natura et usu imperativi apud Latinos, Hafniae, 1825), Zumpt (Lateinische Grammatik, § 583), and Dietrich (Quaestiones grammaticae, Freiburg, 1861). The conclusions reached coincided, for the most part, with those given by Kühner.

The imperative subjunctive was discussed at length with reference to its subjective and objective force.

It was shown that the person of the verb was a large factor in its development. An effort was made to distinguish between the subjunctives of wish and will with reference (1) to their subjective intensity, (2) to their degree of probability, (3) to their representation of futurity.

The conclusion reached from the discussion of the imperative force of the future indicative was that the force which the future gets, when it approaches the imperative use, is given by the modulation of the voice and the energy displayed in accompaniment rather than in any inherent force of the future itself. The future only expresses the hope that the thing enjoined will be performed, as we see it in polite notes "You will excuse," etc.

It was shown that in expressing prohibitions Horace has the most individuality. He well understood the principle of human nature, that we fret when told what we must not do, and he avoided giving his hearer or reader offence by

the greatest ingenuity in expressing prohibitions in some way other than by ne and the imperative, e.g. Epi. 1. 13. Under this topic the distinction between the force of the present and perfect subjunctives in prohibitions was discussed at length. Some attention was given to the discussion of the force of non, nec, and neve with the imperative subjunctive, but the cases in Horace were too few for definite conclusions.

The following circumlocutions used by Horace for the imperative were discussed: Cura with the subjunctive, memento with the infinitive, velim with the subjunctive, noli (nolito, etc.) with the infinitive, cave with the subjunctive, fuge, mitte, omitte, parce, aufer, desine, each used with the infinitive, the subjunctive with the infinitive, e.g. remittas quaerere (C. 2. 11. 3), the prohibition in the signification of the verb and certain other forms expressing obligation, such as debere and the participle in -dus.

A number of formulae or expressions used with the imperative, such as I nunc, mihi crede, age (agedum), dic age, adde, etc., were treated; also the expressions softening the imperative such as sodes, oro, precor, etc. Quin with the present indicative was discussed, together with other minor peculiarities of Horace's treatment of commands and prohibitions.

16. Shortcomings in the Rules of Prosody, by Professor Leon J. Richardson, of the University of California.

We needed no word from Corssen (Aussprache, 1. 328) to know that the traditional rules of Greek and Latin prosody are a 'medley' of loose statements. Incompatible, for example, are the two following:

(a) A syllable is long by position, if its vowel (short) is followed by two consonants, etc.

(b) In dividing a word into syllables any combination of consonants that could begin a word is sounded with the following vowel.

According to the latter rule, we are to divide thus: -omé-pa and o-bli-vi-scor. But, according to the former, the first syllable in each of these examples fulfils the conditions of a syllable long by position. How can these two things co-exist? For the reader to pronounce a short vowel by itself and at the same time to sound it as a syllable long by position is phonetically out of the question. The two vocal acts are mutually exclusive.

The explanation of this inconsistency seems to be in part that the two rules are the outgrowth of widely separate times. What then is the history of the former rule? The theory of quantitative versification, as employed in Greek and Latin poetry, was evolved by the Greeks at a very early period. Speech showed at that time few complex syllables whose elements were compactly united in utterance; 0, 0, x, and diphthongs, for example, were not yet welded into single sounds, it is thought, but were uttered with the component parts still separately audible; was t+h, x was k + h, aɩ was a + i, etc. If this is true, there is even more reason for believing that adjacent consonants were generally uttered separately and not included in one syllable with the following vowel. This mode of utterance by the reader is the only one that could give rise to what is called length by position. Hence rule (a).

But in the course of time, as was to be expected, pronunciation underwent