Owen — Ee vision of Pronouns. 89 



principal clause or it is not. If now it be not so needed, then 

 and then only is it free to attend to business exclusively its own. 

 In other words the special condition or say the 02)porlunity (oc- 

 casion) of the informational clause is the adequacy of the prin- 

 cipal, without its aid. 



Looking now from external conditions to conditions inherent 

 in the relative clause itself, I note that, the business of principal 

 clause and that of informational relative, being mutually quite 

 independent, the relative obtains no countenance from the prin- 

 cipal. It need not allege activit}^ in the interest of the princi- 

 pal as a raison d'etre. Its own business offers ample justifica- 

 tion of its existence, without being also the business of the prin- 

 cipal. It is not a means to an end but rather an end in itself. 

 In the strongest sense of the word it therefore may be said that 

 the informational clause is self-sufficient. Its warrant, like that 

 of the principal, is the intrinsic value of what it expresses. 



This value is primarily dependent on reality. For, if w4iat 

 I tell you be not true, it alone can hardly help you* Yet some 

 leniency must be shown when the informational clause ex- 

 presses what is not true. Such untruth or unreality may be 

 explained either by deliberate falsification on my part or by 

 self-deception. The former possibility may be dismissed as, 

 strictly speaking, extra-linguistic. That is, it isn't the j)urpose 

 of speech to express wdiat speakers do not think. As to self- 

 deception, it should be remembered that the purpose of speech 

 is not to express external fact. It aims to embody solely in- 

 ternal or subjective fact, wdiat the speaker thinks he knows, what 

 in other words he believes.^ Though, as sometimes happens, 

 this belief be not in accordance with external fact, such an in- 

 cident is the mere misfortune of human weakness, and is again 

 strictly extra-linguistic. So long as I successfully express my 



^Thus from my assertion that "A equals B" you learn my subjective status 

 only, my belief in the equality of A and B, but by no means the truth of my 

 proposition. Such belief indeed you also learn from sentences not as a rule 

 perceived to be assertive. Thus even the imperative assures the hearer that 

 the speaker desires or commands ; that is, it asserts or expresses a belief, not 

 indeed in what is desired, but in the mental state of desiring. Again interroga- 

 tion, it is true, is a solicitation of knowledge. But it takes the form of infor- 

 mation-giving ; for it informs the hearer that the speaker desires to be told 

 something. That is, it does not assert that something, nor that telling, but only 

 the mental status of desire, being therefore a pregnant imperative, just as the 

 imperative itself is a pregnant indicative. 



