Owen — Revision of Pronouns. 69 



present formal ^'qiii" may accordingly be ranked among the 

 merely apparent relatives, that is to say the psendorelatives. 



It should also be remarked that clauses of tliis nature, being 

 not at all relative, have no claim to that adjective value which be- 

 longs to so many clauses genuinely relative. Clauses of the pres- 

 ent type are substantive, governed, to use the terminology of 

 Grammar, by the prepositional force of "ut." From the later dis- 

 cussion of relative clauses they may accordingly, for reasons 

 forthcoming, be excluded. 



XXI. MISINTERPRETED RELATIVES. 



I 



To illustrate these, suppose I say, "It was Brown who gave (me) tho 

 book." Wnatever might he meant by these words, as a matter of fact 

 I use them to express a thought which may also be rendered by the 

 following words: "The giver of the book was Brown." o fit my ex- 

 ample to the expression of this thought it must be construed in viola- 

 tion of several strongly urged grammatical principles. The book-giver 

 is in the first place obscurely heralded by "it," my subject pro tem. 

 This "it," though not ranked by Grammar as an indefinite. Is in fact so 

 extremely indefinite that it may stand provisorily, not only for any 

 thing, but also for a person of any gender or number. (Conf. in French 

 "Ce sont mes amies.") This indefini'te provisory subject it is which is 

 made definite by the clause "who gave me the book." That is, "who" 

 "'refers" to "it." 



That, however, "who" is felt by many a speaker to refer to "Brown," 

 I do not deny, admitting rather that in many cases such a feeling is 

 proven. Thus, in "It is I v/ho am the fastest runner," it is plainly "I" 

 that is felt to be the antecedent of "who." For if a verb agrees with its 

 subject in person and number, conversely also v/hen a verb has a given 

 person, it must be because its subject is felt to be of that person. By 

 this law the subject of "am", continued by "who", must be conceived as 

 first personal. Since now the relative and its antecedent deal with the 

 two memberships of a single thought factor, it can hardly be supposed 

 that they would disagree as to the person of that factor. If "who," an 

 obvious relative, regards this factor as of the first person, its antecedent 

 cannot be a word which presents this factor as of another person. By 

 this law "It" is excluded; for it distinctly puts an idea as of the third 

 person. The antecedent therefore can only be "I." The speakers, then' 

 who are responsible for such phraseology, plainly conceived that the 

 simultaneous thought-factor, secondarily described In its function by 

 ^'who," had been primarily symbolized by "I." 



Such a conception is, however, obviously false. In "It was Brown 



