Owen—Hybrid Parts of Speech, 
151 
monly ranked as offering a verbal adjective construction—I 
am unable to find that double function of “Being” as adjective 
(to “son”) and verb (to “ill”) which to me is the verbal adjec¬ 
tive distinctive. 
Contrariwise, on looking a little more closely at the thought 
expressed, I find two mental counterparts of my son (see pages 
117 and 118), as if the expression employed had been “My son 
being ill, he (my son) deferred his departure.” Indeed a sec¬ 
ond mental picture is to me as indispensable as in “My daugh¬ 
ter being ill, my son deferred his departure.” 
The duality of this mental picture abrogates of course its 
use as a once-thought factor of the thoughts expressed by “son 
being ill” and “son deferred.” The relation of this pair of 
thoughts is not then that of co-possessors of a common factor, 
but some other—possibly that of concomitance or sequence—• 
presumably, perhaps you will admit, the relation of cause to 
effect, expressible by “on account of.” 
As elsewhere indicated (pp. 168-184) when two thoughts 
are in mutual relation, they appear as nucleary factors, each 
attended by its fellows; and the chosen nucleary factor of each 
thought is its mid-term. Accordingly, to give correct expres¬ 
sion to the total thought suggested by my illustration, I write 
—by no means “On account of my son being ill, etc,” but as¬ 
suredly—“On account of my son’s being ill, etc.,” (he deferred 
his departure) his deferring was. 
When such an expression, being duly inflected, rises to the 
dignity of an ablative absolute, two interpretations offer. The 
so-called participle (in its absence a participle of “esse” may 
be understood) may be held to be in fact a verbal noun, in the 
ablative of cause, etc., etc., as circumstances may require. It 
is peculiar that the subject of this ablative verbal noun adopts 
the case of the verbal noun itself, instead of repeating either of 
the choices respectively made by the verbal noun in “ing” (a 
virtual subjective genitive), the infinitive (an accusative) or 
the substantive subjunctive (a nominative). Such agreement( ?) 
of subject noun with verbal noun( ?) may be explained, how¬ 
ever, as arising from one of those “attractions” or misapprehen¬ 
sions, in which the use of words abounds—Compare “Laissez 
