Owen—Hybrid Parts of Speech. 
195 
i. 
Their inflectional varieties. 
In exhibiting these it is convenient to present, as a verbal 
crescendo, a diminuendo series of adjectives', beginning with 
(1) the adjective with merely verb-like meaning. 
To illustrate, “Many insects are destructive.” Of this ex¬ 
pression, the final word, invested merely with what might be 
known as verbal potentiality, or better perhaps the souvenir of 
one-while function as a verb, performed by its progenitor (de¬ 
stroy), has obviously no claim to rank in situ as a hybrid, un¬ 
less it be construed as meaning “destroying something ” in 
which case it is merely an abbreviation of 
(2) The adjective in verbal function. 
To illustrate this form of verbal adjective, let 
(a) “Harris studied insects,” 
(b) “Insects are destructive,” and 
(c) “Destructiveness affects plants” 
express three judgments which are to be remodeled into a sin¬ 
gle extended judgment. Accordingly let “insects,” which is 
factor of both (a) and (b), be thought but once. Moreover, 
fori convenience of further exposition, let the “are destructive” 
be replaced by the clumsy “are characterized by destructive¬ 
ness.” To make expressional purpose single, let also the as¬ 
sertion of (b) be omitted. Thought as thus far reconstructed, 
may be indicated by the expression (ah) “Harris studied in¬ 
sects characterized by destructiveness.” 
This thought contains, it is true, a central and a lateral sec¬ 
tion; but, for present purposes, the whole may be regarded as 
central in comparison with the still more lateral (c), which 
now shall interlock with it. 
To effect this interlocking, let the “destructiveness” common 
to (ah) and (c) be thought once only, and—with a view 
again to singleness of expressional purpose—let the assertion 
of (c) be omitted, producing (ahc) “Harris studied insects 
characterized by destructiveness affecting plants.” 
The comparatively central “characterized by destructiveness” 
is merely a round-about for “destructive,” though the latter 
