204 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
CHAPTER III. 
CLASSIFICATION OF VERBAL FORMS. 
THE CONJUGATIQNAE AGGREGATION 
Under this advisedly disparaging title I invite attention to 
what appears to me irrational in what may he called the con- 
jugational roster. 
As ground for antagonizing what at least enjoys the rank 
of honored tradition, even though its acceptance be not pre* 
scribed by linguistic orthodoxy, I note that neither form nor 
meaning consistently controls its membership, but sometimes 
one and sometimes the other. Thus the conjugation of the verb 
for being, in languages of various times and peoples, admits to 
fellowship words of the completest formal difference (e. g. 
“am,” “was” and “have been”), and doubtless very properly; 
for, while they differ one from another in the time to which 
being is referred, no one of them exhibits diminution, augmen¬ 
tation or any other variation of being itself. 
Contrariwise in Greek the preterite oiSa in the sense of “I 
know,” is admitted to the conjugation of the verb which only 
means “to see,” it being alleged that “having seen, I therefore 
know”—an inference doubtless somewhat justifiable, but hardly 
more so than that “having fasted, therefore I hunger.” Ac¬ 
cordingly forms which mean respectively seeing and knowing 
have no better right, on the ground of meaning, to appear in 
a single conjugation, than forms which mean respectively 
fasting and being hungry; and so long as the latter are not 
united in a single conjugational system, it would seem advis- 
