' Owen — Revision of Pronouns. 



ties latent in systematic zoology of this sort, I arrive at ultimate 

 groups as follows: first, the equine, containing the horses, the black 

 cows, the spotted calf, the bull, and the cow with the crumpled horn; 

 second, the bovine, containing other cows and calves. 



The procedure oi! Grammar is quite analogous, though carried 

 further, developing first a proxy class, correct, but never adequately 

 understood. The vast remainder, the linguistic principals, have hardly 

 been more than subconsciously recognized as such. The words of the 

 proxy class, or pronouns proper, being few in number, readily come 

 to be dominantly regarded as exceptional. Whether under this aspect 

 or some other,^ they do as a matter of fact, admit to fellowship the also 

 exceptional personals, demonstratives, indefinites and interrogatives, 

 the work of primary differentiation being so far undone. For as will 

 be amply shown, the personals, demonstratives, etc., so far as merely 

 such, are not proxies but principals.* 



Grammatical classification may, at this stage, be indicated by the 

 following diagram, the members of the now no longer exclusively proxy 

 class (as conceived by Grammar), being put in italics or in capitals. 



Words 



-I 



' Tme Prosies 



True Principals 



HE, SHE, etc. 



Pers. Dem. Indef. 



r I THIS SOME 



. His (= suus) 



Addition, life, death, etc. = Noun 

 Add, live, die, etc. = Verb 



Our Hiesig Quelque Additional, live, dead, etc. = Adj. 



Uiward Hier Somewhere Additionally, etc. = Adv. 



Hence (thought connective) And, etc. = Conj. 



The proposition of Grammar, then, is simply this: all words are of 

 two classes; those which do and those which do not require aid; yet 

 those which do, include a superior number of those which do not. By 

 cross classification the remainder of those which do not require aid 

 (e. g., the words in Roman type) are subdivided into nouns, verbs, etc. 



Peter, having been robbed to enrich Paul, is now in part indemni- 

 fied; the pronominal class of proxies, previously extended to include 

 personals, etc., is now heavily reduced by the distribution of all but its 

 substantive members among the adjectives, etc., of the principals. That 

 is, the proxies having taken in many principals, the principals in turn 

 absorb the bulk of the proxies. At this stage Grammatical procedure 

 leaves only the capitalized words of the above diagram in the proxy 

 class, now no longer such either exclusively or exhaustively. 



^The appendixes further show that personals, demonstratives, and indefinites 

 have also, at times, a vicarious value. 



^In the meantime observe that in "Some say," "I am glad to see you," "This la 

 my brother," "Who is there?", the italicised words perform their duties fully 

 without the aid of other words, that is, as principals. 



