Owen—Hybrid Parts of Speech. 
193 
a difference. Thus to illustrate, “You see that the birds (are) 
eat(ing) insects/ 7 suggests by means of “that 77 a blended view 
of the birds 7 activity—a view which, however, I cannot dis¬ 
cover to be taken, until the expressional act is concluded, and 
which therefore does not seem to me to affect the syntax of 
the subjunctive clause or the mode of its affiliation with “You 
see. 77 Accordingly I restrict myself to saying that the given 
expression encourages at first a view of the later revealed phe¬ 
nomenon, as an unknown unit necessarily to be made known 
by means of its constituents. The following expressions rather 
suggest to me, at the outset, constituents which, after the sen¬ 
tence-end, may be combined into mental units. Each one I 
consider in its lateral aspect only, without regard to the pres¬ 
tige with which the verbal element of each is invested by ad¬ 
mission into central syntax. 
“You see the birds (to be) eat(ing) insects, 77 so far as un¬ 
affected by emphasis, appears to me to pose the birds, the eat¬ 
ing and the insects on a footing of absolute parity. 
“You see their eating insects 77 leaves to “eating, 77 “insects 77 
(and their action-to-object relation) their undiminished emi¬ 
nence, while reducing “birds 77 (and their relation to the eat- 
ing) to a secondary adjunctive rank. 
“You see them insect-eat 77 appears to operate analogously, “in¬ 
sects 77 (and the relation holding between eating and them) be¬ 
ing reduced to a secondary adjunctive rank, while “them 77 and 
“eat 77 retain their primacy. “You see their eating of insects 77 
seems to subordinate both the birds and the insects to the eat¬ 
ing. 
Obviously, once a noun, the subjunctive like any other ver¬ 
bal noun is theoretically able to perform all functions of a 
noun. It may enter syntax not only as the object (or the 
subject) of a more central verb, but also in other functions un- 
considered here. Although it is uninflected as a noun, the 
unaided subjunctive verbal noun may be sensed as dative of 
purpose, ablative of cause, concomitant, etc. Aided by a prep¬ 
osition, it operates with all the powers of the prepositional 
phrase, playing its part in syntax as adverbial and sometimes 
