Owen — Revision of Pronouns. 9 



It would be natural to suppose that the self-sufficient meaning- 

 namer must always thus stand first in the sentence, and that the 

 word which needs its help should defer appearance until that 

 help is present, and therefore available. Such, however, is not 

 always the case. Thus, "Though he is very busy, Brown is go- 

 ing to Europe." In this example you can not know who is 

 meant by "he" until you reach the later "Brown." It might 

 seem that in this case "he" should be called initiative, and 

 "Brown" retrospective. And so indeed they should, were mere 

 order the criterion. But the actual criterion is the powder to pre- 

 sent in full an intended meaning, or, otherwise phrased, ability 

 to take the initiative in idea-naming. Now the word "he" may 

 seem to make an effort in this direction. But even if it does, it 

 scores no success; and therefore it cannot justly be called in- 

 itiative. As a matter of fact, however, "he" makes no such ef- 

 fort. For surely you do not credit me with trying to show you 

 whom I mean by the aid of so helpless a word as "he." And I 

 am very certain that I do not so intend the word myself. Judged 

 then, by my intention, by your acquiescence, and by results, the 

 word "he" can not be called initiative. 



Its actual use is as follows : it expresses very inadequately, in 

 a purely provisional way, an idea which I intend to express with 

 more exactness bv a later word. In fact, the use of "he" in 

 this case is a virtual order to you to look forw^ard mentally to an 

 idea yet to be distinctly presented. As such you accept the 

 "he" and, tolerating its momentary inadequacy, you do look for- 

 ward in mind to the adequate idea which it vaguely prefigures. 

 Judged then by my intention, by your acquiescence, and by re- 

 sults accomplished, words employed thus may be known as an- 

 ticipative or prospective. 



The prospective and retrospective words are characterized 

 alike by incompetency, except so far as aided by the self-suf- 

 ficient initiatives. They may therefore be grouped together un- 

 der the common title of insufficient or vicarious. The prime 

 divisions then of words, based upon their method of presenting 

 meaning, are the initiatives and the vicarious, th-. latter being 

 subclassed as prospective and retrospective. 



Initiatives compose the main body of every vocabulary, the 



