216 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
Table oe Verbal Forms 
Assertive Unassertive 
Verbal Nouns. Verbal Adjectives. Verbal Adverb * 
1 The noun with 
merely verb-like 
meaning 
2 The noun with ver¬ 
bal function. 
3 The Latin gerund. 
4 The Latin supine. 
5 The English form in 
“ing.” 
6 The infinitive. 
7 The Portuguese in¬ 
finitive. 
8 The subjunctive in 
substantive usage. 
1 The adjective with 
merely verb-like 
meaning 
2 The adjective with 
verbal function. 
3 The participle. 
4 The subjunctive 
used as an adjec¬ 
tive. 
One form only. 
While different languages exhibit the several species and sub¬ 
species listed, in greater or less profusion, and while each spe¬ 
cies and sub-species offers more or less of formal variation, lit¬ 
tle if any difficulty attends their exact appreciation, except per¬ 
haps in the case of tense. 
Meaning by tense the variation of the verb, to express, in 
crude approximation, date intended, and excluding all idea of 
singleness or multiplicity of occurrence, of time occupied, and 
of beginning, continuing or ending, I note that time is con¬ 
ceived as consisting of a past and a future, divided by an 
instant known as the present. 71 Thus, confining attention to 
the indicative mode, I find that “I ate,” “I eat” and the peri¬ 
phrastic “I shall eat” exhibit the action named, as occurring 
respectively in the past, in the present or in the future—or,, 
say, at a past, a present or a future date. 
7 i Linguistically however the present is often conceived as having 
more or less duration, consisting of the actual present and more or less 
of the past, or more or less of the future, or more or less of each. 
