Owen^-Hybrid Parts of Speech. 217 
As simple reckoning of this sort must of necessity be prior 
to whatever is more intricate, let the time-divisions noted bear 
the name of primary. As further reckoning will be found to 
base itself upon them, they may also be known as basalfunda¬ 
mental, or say absolute. As suggested by the expressions “pri¬ 
mary” and “absolute/ 5 the reckoning of time may also be sec¬ 
ondary or relative. Instead of adopting a moment absolutely 
present, past or future, as itself the date of an occurrence, I 
may make a use of such a moment, as a temporal landmark 
or reckoning-point, to which I regard the occurrence as rela¬ 
tively prior or coincident or posterior—that is, relatively past 
or present or future. Thus, in the historical reckoning of 
time, the birth of our Lord and Savior serves as point of reck¬ 
oning, to which the discovery of America is sensed as posterior. 
Row “posterior to” is “future as reckoned from 75 a given point 
in time. That point of reckoning being itself in the past, the 
discovery is accordingly in what is commonly known as the 
future from a past reckoning-point, though better knowable per¬ 
haps, more briefly, as the post-past. Analogously, the tense of 
eating in “I was to eat, 55 and in “I said six hours ago that I 
should eat in two hours, 55 is also the post- or future-past, an 
interpretation familiar to every student of the Romance lan¬ 
guages. 
Conversely, the Punic w r ars, regarded from the historical 
reckoning point, are in the tense which is variously known as 
pluperfect, anterior past, remoter past, or past from a view¬ 
point in the past, but more simply still as the ante-past. 
Again, not only a past, but also a future point of reckoning 
may be adopted, developing an ante-future and a post-future, 
exemplified by “I shall have eaten 5572 and “I shall be about 
to eat. 
The present-past and the present-future, which would only 
repeat the simple past and the simple future, require no com¬ 
ment. 
72 The ante-future value of this expression is obvious when dates are 
supplied, as in “Tomorrow at 9 A. M. I shall have eaten my breakfast 
at 8 A. M ” 
