Owen—Interrogative Thought—Means of Its Expression. 465 
who killed Lincoln 5 ”—will perhaps appear more plausibly, if I 
may put the operation, of the IS in the light afforded by another 
means of symbolizing, purely theoretical. Let it then be seen 
how interrogative purpose might be accomplished by a quite 
imaginary symbol, built on the lines of an interrogative pro¬ 
noun. 
To break the way for such a symbol, I note that words in¬ 
cluded by Grammar in the pronominal word-class have, with 
little formal variation, quite a range as parts of speech, or say 
in sentential function,, though they do not, so far as I have noted, 
operate as verbs. For instance, the demonstrative may act as 
substantive or adjective or adverb (e. g. “there, 55 “thus 55 etc.). 
It does not, however, appear as verb, though obviously it has the 
geration upward—that is, sentential incompleteness would be marked 
by rising inflection. 
When once, however, the omitted “Tell me” is understood to be a part 
of what the interrogative sentence means, the rising inflection would 
seem to be no longer needed. If, indeed, the interrogative “IS” were 
different in form frotn the “is” of ordinary assertion, I should 
say that rising inflection would be entirely superfluous. But, as such 
is not the case, the rising inflection, and also the interrogative order 
of words (“inversion”) continue an auxiliary service in establishing the 
interrogative IS as such, in distinction from the commoner assertive 
“is.” 
Both expedients, however, are frequently used for other purposes. 
(See pp. 403-404.) Both are, in American English, renounced with 
questions which employ recognizedly interrogative words (e. g., “Who 
killed Lincoln?”) Indeed, the rising inflection is sometimes neglected 
even when no recognizedly interrogative word is present. To illus¬ 
trate, “The question before us is the following: Is Brown honest?” 
So also sometimes in a contrasted sentence-pair, consisting of a state¬ 
ment and a question, the statement is uttered with the rising inflec¬ 
tion—the question with the falling: e. g., “Jones is honest. Is Brown 
honest?” “Brown is agreeable. Is he also honest f” Also the inver¬ 
sion is sometimes neglected, as in the so-called statement with rising 
inflection: e. g., “Brown is honest?” I do not, however, think of a case 
in which the question (without especially recognized interrogative 
word) omits both inversion and rising inflection. Nor should I expect 
the omission of both these interrogative indications, until some substi¬ 
tute shall be provided, to distinguish the interrogative IS from the 
“is” of ordinary assertion. Meantime these two indications, either 
alone or both combined, appear to me to do for the IS precisely what 
the acute accent does for the T i? of' Greek. 
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