248 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
On the other hand, expressional advantage of another sort 
is sometimes offered by verbal nouns of inferior verbal po¬ 
tency—for instance, the infinitive. To illustrate, exhorting 
my dog to leave his place of comfort under the sofa, to tackle 
an intruding rat, I say “Go catch him!”—in which I follow 
the syntax of the Frenchman’s “Allez ehercher!”, intending 
“catch”, as an infinitive, to operate as dative of purpose with 
“Go”. 91 
This thought may also be expressed subjunctively. A speci¬ 
alty of the subjunctive being however the utmost carefulness 
in looking after its subject, we shall not find the subjunctive 
by any means contented, if we give it no subject to care for. 
In perhaps the majority of languages we shall therefore find 
it necessary to express that subject, which is so commonly 
omitted with infinitives, when it has already served as subject 
of a more central verb. Accordingly, in subjunctive expres¬ 
sion, the catching will appear as “you catch”, further ampli¬ 
fied by an introductory “that”, or sign of substantive usage; 
so, then, “that you catch.” Moreover, as the going and the 
catching are in the relation of action to desired resultant action 
(or say purpose), it is usual to express this relation by the prep¬ 
osition “for”, or by “in order that”. In full then, my order 
to the dog, expressed with subjunctive aid, appears as “Go in 
order that you catch him.” 
In this elaborate form, I doubt whether my dog will under¬ 
stand the order. What has been gained in the accuracy made 
possible by fullness, has been rather more than lost in the com¬ 
pactness which, in “Go catch him”, was enforced by brevity. 
To say nothing of the canine power of interpretation, the dog’s 
attention has had too long a time to wander. 
With verbal adjectives the case is quite analogous. To illus¬ 
trate, and again without the use of punctuation, “I hardly 
know a man who having been pressed by his wife for money to 
buy an Easter bonnet have ( aie ) though keenly realizing that 
91 In the form “Go and catch”, the “and” may be regarded as the old 
preposition so commonly made over into “a”, “an” or “and”, as in “I 
go a fishing,” perhaps in “He was an hungered” and in “Try and 
find it”. That is, the “catch” is not imperative. 
