Owen—Hybrid Parts of Speech. 
157 
CHAPTER II. 
THE VERBAL HYBRIDS. 
THE VERBAL NOUNS. 
An embarrassing misconception . 
The study of some verbal nouns is embarrassed by the fact 
that, more or less successfully, Grammar infects expressions 
in which they occur, with what I am forced to regard as wrong 
interpretation. I refer to the frequently announced opinion 
that the subject of the infinitive is the object of a principal or 
central verl)—an opinion which has favored the untrue gener¬ 
alization (that “idol” of the class-room) that the subject of 
the infinitive is put in the accusative case—a generalization 
attended by the more or less conscious derivative superstition 
that, for reasons wholly inconceivable, service as the subject of 
the infinitive inherently necessitates accusative case, whether 
formally indicated by inflection or not—a superstition which in 
turn distorts perception of thought-structure. 
To deal with the forms of this mischief in the more conven¬ 
ient order, I note in the first place that the law of accusative* 
usage is heartily violated by Spanish in “Le favorezoo por ser 
yo su amigo”—literally translated by “I favor him by reason 
of I to be his friend”—also in the exclamatory usage of German 
and English, for instance “Er so etwas thun!” “What! he do 
such a thing!”—and more distinctly in the following lines of 
Locksley Hall: 34 . 
34 These I quote with small respect for the editor’s first occurring 
comma, deeming that the sense would much more naturally parallel 
that of my other examples, than he what he has indicated. 
