that in the thousand years subsequent to separation each language loses 19 percent of the morpheme stock they had in common when they were a single language. Each language retains 81 percent of the original stock. Suppose we consider an original sample stock of 200 morphemes. Language A will retain about 162 of them, as will language B. But there is no reason to expect that the two languages will necessarily lose the same items. The most probable outcome is that language B will retain 81 percent of the 162 which language A retains as well as 81 percent of the 38 which language A losses. This means that A and B can be expected to have about 132 or 66 percent of the basic stock in common.

     “Such a calculation can be reversed. If 66 percent of the basic morpheme stock seems to be cognate in two languages we may assume that they have been separate for 1,000 years. If 14 percent is cognate, 2,000 years is the most probable period of separation.

     “This method known as glottochronolgy, still in the early stages of development, promises to provide a useful basis for interpreting the degree of language relationship. It also provides a means of dating certain events in pre-history. Such dates, like carbon-14 dates, are statistical. They provide only an estimate of the most probable date, together with some estimate of the probability of any given deviation from such a date.”¹

     I leave the judgement of the theory of glottochronology entirely to the intelligent reader.

     The only good service the authors of Descriptive Linguistics have done so far, consists in the elaboration of General Phonetics through subtle division of the palatal region and into several zones and fine distinctions of vowels and consonants, and in the creation of certain technical terms such as phoneme and morpheme. Otherwise, the system of study is not commendable.

      The term Descriptive Linguistics itself betrays the system, as being devoid of the historical aspect which is an essential feature of Linguistic Science. The descriptive aspect, pure and simple, properly belongs to the domain of Grammar.