Owen — Revision of Pronouns. 13 



The remaining egocentric words are not developed from the 

 act of speech. Being assumablv developed in the interest of 

 something else, it is sufficient to know them as aliocausate. 

 They will be found to include the demonstratives "this/\ "that/' 

 etc., and other words which Grammar has overlooked. 



The egocentrics, then, including linguacausates and alio- 

 <3ausates, comprise such definites as change their meaning with 

 the change of speaker. The I'emaining definites do not change 

 in meaning with the change of speaker. As such words require 

 no examination, being none of them cited as pronouns, thev may 

 be filed awav for future reference under the rubric absolute. 



Turning now to the indefinites, I find that they also differ, 

 as appears in the following illustrations. If I tell you that 

 ^^Somewhere I have a book which treats of eastern birds,'' it 

 is plain that the location of the book is quite indefinite ; yet, 

 as far as mv statement shows, the indefiniteness is to me a mat- 

 ter of indifference. Suppose, however, I say to you, "AVliere 

 is that book V it is obvious in the first place that my idea of 

 the book's location is quite as indefinite as before. It is further 

 evidenc that your knowledge of this indefiniteness must be de- 

 rived from the word "where", and not from any other. It 

 seems then safe to sav that the idea expressed bv "where" is 

 that of indefinite place. It also is clear that from the word 

 "where" you learn something further. In fact it is from this 

 word that you also learn my desire to know location more ex- 

 actly.^ For the purpose of the moment it is enough to note 

 that question-asking differs from mere expression of indefi- 

 niteness, by the addition of desire for its relief. Strict fidelity 

 to this difference would require that the total of words which 

 express indefinite ideas should be divided into such as do, and 

 such as do not further express the desire that the indefiniteness 

 be relieved. As, however, such a division involves a very cum- 

 brous terminology, I content myself with regarding the expres- 

 sion of such a desire as rouo'hlv so much unendurance or in- 

 toleration of the indefinite idea. I am thus able to differen- 

 tiate the indefinites more conveniently as the tolerated and the 



^I overlook order and rising inflection, as botli are quite equivocal. 



