184 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
termining cause. 47 In many cases, however, the verbal element' 
alone is available as nucleus. Thus, in “Astronomers declare 
the sun to exceed the moon,” and in “The doctor wants me to 
eat meat,” nothing can serve as nucleus except the verb, without 
an important and unacceptable change of meaning. 
Tlieir inflectional possibilities . 
As verbal nouns perform the service of a verb and also the 
^service of a noun, it is obviously possible for them to be in¬ 
flected for each of the services. Accordingly they offer some 
analogy with relative words, in the examination of which (see 
“Pronouns,” pages 58-9) some effort was made to show the pos¬ 
sibility and even the rationality of double inflection. To illus¬ 
trate, in “I know a man (who) will help you,” the idea 
named by “man” being thought once only and only once ex¬ 
pressed (for “who” does not repeat that idea but only contin¬ 
ues it), but serving none the less as member in each of two- 
thoughts (those, namely, which might be expressed by “I know 
a man” and “Man will help you”), it would be rational to give 
to “man” the accusative inflection showing it to be the object 
of “know”, and also a nominative inflection (virtually supplied 
by “who”) showing it to be the subject of “will help”. 
In such a case the doubly serving word is, in its double clausal 
membership, one part of speech. In the case of verbal nouns 
it is two. In the latter case a double inflection is accordingly 
inflection as two different parts of speech, a type of inflection 
quite as possible, quite as rational—even more rational, I think 
—than double inflection of a doubly serving noun. Por, with 
the increase in the possibilities of thought-construction, comes 
the greater expediency of utilizing eyery means to make the 
actual construction obvious. 
To illustrate, given “I have seen an express train strike a 
freight,” since “strike” is object of “have seen”, it is rational 
and desirable to give to “strike” the accusative noun-inflection; 
47 Also tlie relation alone necessitates companion terms. Thus the 
presence of > entails the mental presence, say, of A and B, while 
neither the presence of A nor that of B entails the presence of any other 
idea. 
