Introduction to this issue of Mother Tongue

This issue was originally intended to be dedicated to the memory of Raimo Anttila, who died on January 27, 2023. That plan had to be modified because of the sudden and unexpected death of John Bengtson, our long-time editor-in-chief. In addition to his editorial work, John had served in many different roles for ASLIP, including President, Vice-President, Secretary/Treasurer, and Board Member. In recognition of his long-term dedication to the cause, this issue of Mother Tongue is therefore dedicated jointly to the memories of John Bengtson and Raimo Anttila.

• In commemoration of John's life, Václav Blažek has prepared a biographical tribute to him that includes a detailed bibliography of John's scholarly work. Various ASLIP members have appended eulogistic notes based on their long association with him.
• Raimo Anttila was, for many years, an honored member of the ASLIP Council of Fellows. In the last issue (MT24), we were able to include tributes by two of his former students, Sheila Embelton and Angela Della Volpe. In this issue we add memorials by two additional students, Georgios K. Giannakis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and Lyle Campbell (Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii). It also seemed fitting to honor Raimo by reprinting a review by Leonid Kulikov of one of Anttila's most important books. Professor Kulikov also contributed a heretofore unpublished article that was originally written for a planned Festschrift in honor of Raimo Anttila, which, for various reasons, never materialized. The subject of Kulikov's article is the Indo-European Schwebeablaut, a subject that had also been investigated extensively by Raimo.
• Jan Henrik Holst has contributed an article entitled "Observations on the Reflexes k- and h- for Initial *k- in Hungarian."
• Roger Blench graciously sent us a new article, "(De)Classifying Arunachal Pradesh Languages: Reconsidering the Evidence," which is based upon his recent field work with the Trans-Himalayan [= Sino-Tibetan] languages.
• Gregory Haynes has contributed an article entitled "Old Norse Yggdrasill: An Etymological Re-evaluation."
• The first ever English language translation of Michael Witzel's article, "Sur le chemin du ciel" [The Path in Heaven] is proudly included in this issue. These last two articles address mythological subjects, which is fitting given that many of our oldest written sources of ancient languages deal with myth.
• Finally, we include an announcement of Pierre Bancel's newly published book, Pris aux mots – De l'origine du langage à l'origine des langues.

Because of his illness, John Bengtson was only peripherally involved in the production of Mother Tongue 24, with Gregory Haynes and Pierre Bancel handling most of the editorial work. For the present issue (MT25), John's contributions were limited to the decisions to accept the articles by Holst and Haynes for inclusion. Otherwise, this issue is entirely the responsibility of the current editors, so the blame for any errors or omissions should rightfully fall on their shoulders. Bengtson is innocent!

It is our intention to maintain the level of quality that John Bengtson set for the Mother Tongue Journal, as far as possible. Any suggestions or critiques are warmly invited. Above all, please keep Mother Tongue in mind as a publisher for your latest research. Articles dealing with long-distance language relationships on a global scale, relationships between languages, language families and language phyla are welcome provided that they use rigorous comparative methodology with well-documented sources. Additionally, we also wish to solicit articles from any other field of study that complements historical and comparative linguistics in prehistory. These include, but may not be limited to, archaeology, population genetics, and comparative mythology.

November, 2024
— Gregory Haynes, editor-in-chief, and Pierre Bancel, editor