M ay I say first of all that I appreciate the opportunity kindly granted me by the Editor, for commenting on Professor Samarin's present reaction to my article which this journal published three years ago. Professor Samarin and I have carried on an intermittent dialogue in this area of mutual interest since 1968. I have always found his remarks stimulating. main thrust of his present arguments may be summarized as follows: (a) a sociolinguistic and religious explanation of glossolalia fully sufficient and does not necessitate, nay, even forbids any psychological or neurophysiological inquiry; (b) I cannot claim to have undertaken any cross-cultural study since I was concerned only with Pentecostals who spoke related languages; and (c) the specific identical features detected by me in the glossolalia of various groups constitute simply a style of discourse. As much as space allows, I should like briefly to comment on these three points. (a) Explaining a behavior, or any phenomenon for that matter, involves showing that, in philosophical terms, the consequent potentially present in the antecedent. No explanation can be considered complete unless it accounts for all observed consequents. Now: Samarin mentions in a footnote to an article that some glossolalia syllables get extra stress and volume. The incidence of this stress, he says, is probably to be explained by intonational and emotional factors, not linguistic ones in the strictest sense. (1968:74) Aside from the fact that intonation a suprasegmental element of great linguistic interest, should not this part of the soundtrack be investigated? What the antecedent to these consequents? I suggested the hypothesis that it was the altered state of consciousness that had this effect on the utterance and thus directly shaped it, both cross-culturally and cross-linguistically. That in religious (and some other) environments the speakers are, for varying intervals, in an altered state (or trance), is, by the way, not a theory, as Samarin states, but simply an observational fact (For additional material see Goodman, 1972). (b) As to the lack of cross-cultural verification I should like to note that both in the article under scrutiny (Goodman, 1969a) and in another one bringing the same material in somewhat extended form (Goodman, 1969b), which also known to Samarin (Samarin, 1972), I mentioned the fact that I also examined sound tapes from Umbanda, and that the material from this Afro-Brazilian mediumistic healing cult