Owen—Hybrid Parts of Speech. 
245 
INFLUENCE OF EXPRESSIONAL EXPEDIENCY 
Under this title I propose to examine the respective advant¬ 
ages afforded by the varieties of each verbal hybrid, in exhibit¬ 
ing the structure of the thought in whose expression either 
variety of that hybrid might cooperate. As I have not yet 
encountered any varieties of verbal adverb, examination covers 
only varieties of verbal noun and varieties of verbal adjective. 
Beginning with the former, I presuppose that thought in the 
expression of which the verbal forms considered operate, is 
void of belief—that it accordingly is lateral—that the struc¬ 
ture of centro-lateral thought demands for its expression the 
use of a verbal noun—that theoretically it is practicable to 
employ any one of the several verbal nouns exhibited on pages 
188-191. 
That these may exhibit minor differences in the content of 
thought by them expressed, and that these differences may in¬ 
fluence the speaker’s choice, shall be admitted, without admit¬ 
ting them to have an important determining value. The like 
is true of minor structure-differences, which are likely to at¬ 
tend the differences in content of the thought. 89 
89 To illustrate, I offer two expressions containing verbal nouns: 
(1) I desire (that) Brown employ Robinson; 
(2) I desire Brown’s employment of Robinson. 
In (2) the “’s” exhibits a relation, not ot possession, but of actor to 
his own action, distinctly recognized by Grammar in the phrase “sub¬ 
jective genitive”; and the (in meaning) variable preposition “of”, 
which here is operative as a case inflection, exhibits the relation of 
action to its own actee, distinctly recognized by Grammar in the 
phrase “objective genitive.” These two relations may however be made 
over into one. Much as the combined relations of “brother to brother” 
and “father to son” are (in case the father and one brother be identi¬ 
cal) made over into the single relation of “uncle to nephew”, so also 
the relations of “actor to action” and “action to actee” are made over 
into that of “actor to actee”, which, in the special form of “employer 
to employee” is expressed in (1) by “employ.” It appears accordingly 
that relation is, in (2), more analytically recognized than it is in (IT. 
This difference in the content of thought, exhibited also in the 
structure of thought, does not impress me however as adequate to ex¬ 
plain the use of (1) to the exclusion of (2) or vice versa. Indeed it 
is by no means impossible that, to many, the two suggest no difference 
of content or of structure—that the “’s” and the “of” and the “em¬ 
ployment” of (2) are virtually ranked as the merely trisected “em¬ 
ploy” of (1), precisely as “Brown is in the nephew-to-uncle relation 
with Robinson” may be cut up into “Brown is in the son-to-father re- 
