Comparatists sometimes encounter unavoidable uncertainties in their research of correspondences between the phonemes historically attested and those which have been reconstructed by comparative operations. This is just the case of thephonemes /c/ of Skr. ric-and ruc-, (f. ex. pt. I), and of the Hawaiian /k/(<MP*t or *nt) and /?/(<MP*k or *ηk), and some others as well (pt. II).
Linguistic reconstructs (forms or phonemes) are all, as a matter of fact, merelyfictitious, if not mere fictions at all. They are established by comparative operationsmethodical and systematic, reflecting, however, the respective ways of thinking of the reconstructors and their varying ability of exhausting the actualevidences in concern.
Hence the uncertainties and disagreements however slight in reconstructionsmay be inevitable in the last analysis; the discrepancies of the subjective withthe objective are much common and very human indeed, too. Effort to seekat any price after the narrowest possible exactness of correspondences maysometimes be erroneous, even irrational. Funther, ‘there exist in fact no trulyquantitative, scientific criteria for measuring relationship and for furnishing a clueto comparability, indeed a permission to compare, which will allow us to disregardintuitive, impressionistic judgements and non-linguistic criteria’, as Prof. E. Pulgram says in one of his beautiful articles he presented me with (Lingua, 10, 1961, p.25); also, see V. Georgiev Issledovanija po sravniterno-istori Ceskomujazykoznaniju. Moskva, 1958. pt. II (p.23-).

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As R. H. Robins aptly says in his obituary article, the death of J. R. Firth, which occurred on 14 December, 1960, marks the end of an era in the study oflinguistics in Britain.
J. R. Firth, M. A., LL. D.(Edin.), O. B. E., (1980-1960), was Professor of General Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University ofLondon, from 1944 to 1956, and was President of the Philological Society from 1954 to 1957.
Firth, while regarding himself as a traditionalist, paying a high tribute to the scholars of the past and demanding full recognitions of their contributionsto linguistic science, developed a very original outlook on language and linguisticscience, and thus came to be known as the leader of the London group of linguists.
The contributions he made to linguistic science are many, but the twodevelopments particularly associated with his name are the theory of ‘context of situation’ and prosodic analysis.
Firth insisted that the statement of meaning was the greatest concern of descriptive linguistics. He rejected the dichotomy which splits language into‘content’ and ‘expression, ’ and proposed that a linguistic event should be takenin its entirety and analyzed at a number of different levels, situational, collocational, syntactical, phonological and phonetic, the meaning of the event beingthus stated at each level. He insisted that what is conventionally regarded asmeaning would be best dealt with when analyzed in terms of ‘context of situation’in which the linguistic event in question is embedded. Thus he emphasizedthe necessity of the study of persons and personalities as part of the situation.
He took over the notion of ‘context of situation’ first proposed by thenoted anthropologist, Malinowski, with whom he co-operated, and developed itas a schematic construct imposed by the linguist upon the material in makingstatements of meaning.
True to the tradition of the British school of linguists, he was also an excellentphonetician. He was particularly concerned with the phonological featuresaffecting stretches larger than ‘segments, ’ and treated them as belonging to anorder different from that of ‘phonematic' units which are conventionally calledconsonants and vowels. He called these features ‘prosodies.’ Pitch, stress, length, aspiration, etc. may fall under the category of prosody, ’ but prosodies vary fromlanguage to language according to the structural patterning of languages. Hebelieved that the phonic data presented before the analyst is most exhaustivelyand aptly dealt with by prosodic analysis.
His proposals and suggestions, though most stimulating and illuminating, were not always worked out in detail, so that his writings are not always easto follow for those who never came in close contact with him. But the numerousworks of his colleagues and followers will elucidate the main points of his theory.

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An opinion has long been prevailed in Russian linguistics that the so calledpronominal forms (polnyje formy) of adjectives are functionally comparable to theconstruction “definit article+adjective (+substantive)” of other European languages, and the nominal forms (kratkije formy) to “indefinit article+adjective (+substantive)”.
This is mainly due to the conception that the pronominal forms-beingestablished by means of adding demonstrative elements ji, ja, je to the corresponding nominal forms respectively, with the subsequent fusion of these components shouldin their function be a sum, or rather product, of the functionsof adjectives proper and those of demonstrative pronouns.
This view may seem quite natural at first glance, and seems to be supportedby the fact that the construction “definit article+adjective (+substantive)” in Greek religious documents corresponds in a large measure to the pronominal forms in Old Slavonic versions. However, a close examination will reveal that there remains a possibility of different conclusion more persuasive perhaps: anadjective modifies substantives indirectly through the intermediation of its demonstrativeelements (ji, ja, je), e. g. veliku-ji knjazi “great-that/prince=prince, that great.” That is, an adjective first determines these demonstrative elements, forms an expression functionally very akin to an adjectival substantives, andthen stands as appositive-modifier of and to the substantives they modify.
On the basis of this new hypothesis the author systematically studies thematerials, drawn from the Sinodal' reduction of Novgorod Primary Chronicle, and tries to establish fundamental functions of pronominal and nominal forms. He came to the following conclusion: the function of pronominal forms is todenote that the correlation between adjective and substantive in a given combinationis considered, in the consciousness of the speaker, as already establishedbefore the moment of his speech. On the contrary, nominal forms are usedwhen such correlation is to be established just at the moment of the speech.

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