186 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
it—the inflection being of the type which may be known as as- 
sociational; and both this and functional inflections may be 
known as instructional. 
The constructional inflections of the individual verb are 
those which indicate voice, that is, the proverse or reverse as¬ 
pect of a relation 48 —tense, or the added element of time—as¬ 
sertion, or the added element of the speaker’s belief. Its in¬ 
structional elements are functionally whatever shows its serv¬ 
ice as a mid-term (usually an inflection primarily employed 
for another service) and associationally its so-called number 
and person endings, which show that even with a choice of 
positions as mid-term it must take the one which will bring 
it into association with a first term of a particular number and 
person. These endings, however, do not indicate an actual (bona 
fide) number or person of the verbal idea. 
The constructional inflections of the noun are those for num¬ 
ber, those for gender and those for the genitive, dative and ab¬ 
lative cases. Its instructional inflections are functionally the 
nominative and accusative, which regularly exhibit service as 
first or last term, 49 and associationally any inflections used to 
indicate apposition. 
Taking Latin as a model, and allowing to the noun five cases 
(the vocative being strictly extra-structural, corresponding 
neither to building materials nor to their position absolute or 
relative, but rather to the name of him for whom a structure is 
to be erected), two numbers, and three genders; and allowing 
to the verb two voices, six tenses (subject to later examination) 
and six varieties of purely formal person and number; it is 
obvious that a verbal noun which should possess in full the 
standard inflections of both verb and noun, would have in all 
no less than 5x2x3x2x6x6=2,160 inflectional forms. More¬ 
over, were the verbal noun inflected to suit the tivo numbers, 
three persons and three genders of its object, which is linguist- 
48 compare “The book overlies the box” (= the two are in the rela¬ 
tion of overlier to overlain) with “The book is overlain by the box” 
(= the two are in the relation of overlain to overlier). 
49 Not however service as last term after a quality relation. The 
last term “red” of “The roses are red” is ranked as an adjective. 
Compare “The roses have redness.” 
