206 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
be held responsible for this inconsistency, in view of the embar¬ 
rassment offered by the coexistent “jactabam,” “jactito” and 
“jactitabam.” But Grammar is apparently responsible for 
ranking “jaciebam” as a tense of “jacio.” So far as tense be 
taken as expressing merely present, past or future time of oc¬ 
currence, “jaciebam” cannot be distinguished in tense from 
“jeci,” either being available for any date admissible with the 
other. Apart from difference in time consumed—a topic for 
later examination—the difference between them is the differ¬ 
ence between “throwing” and “throwings.” In short the so- 
called tense is a sporadic inflectional form, which exhibits as 
plural an act not so regarded by other forms of the verb. As 
such, it is to be distinguished with some care from the so-called 
plural forms of the verb, which merely require the verb’s asso¬ 
ciation with a plural subject. The existence of these purely 
instructional’ “plurals” leads me, in view of possible confusion, 
to object to the practice which admits to conjugation those other¬ 
wise entirely admissible bona fide plural forms. 
At this point one encounters terminology of quite elusive and 
presumably inconstant value. “Progressive” action, in the 
sense of making progress from a beginning toward an end, im¬ 
plies “duration” or “continuation;” but the converse proposi¬ 
tion does not hold. “Completion” is ambiguous, applying not 
only to the case in which nothing remains to do, but also 
to the case in which merely nothing more is done. I 
“complete” my eating either because I am no longer hungry or 
because the supply of food is exhausted, recognizing both an 
ideal and a practical completion of the act. Without attempt¬ 
ing to enforce or apply these distinctions, I content myself 
with a rather rough-shod treatment of the two ensuing topics. 
The verbal form for bona fide plural action (e. g. “facie- 
bam”) often neglects plurality, adding instead to the constant 
meaning of the verb the idea of continuation—a change of value 
not so violent as might perhaps at first appear. Por the con¬ 
tinued—or, say the long, in either time or space—is in much 
the same relation to the uncontinued—or say the short—as 
the many to the one. Both the continued and the many may 
