Owen—Relations Expressed by the Passive Voice. 105 
to the full appreciation of the others which have actually been 
discovered and adopted, now the one and now the other, as the 
meanings of the passive voice. 
It will in time, I think, appear distinctly that the evolution 
of the passive meaning was diverted from its natural, rational 
course. My reasoning will accordingly endeavor to establish 
first the rational, and then the (commonly accepted, current) 
actual passive meaning. To reach the latter, I shall analyze 
the eating-formed relation that obtains e. g. between the apples 
and the boys of my illustration into (1) relation between the 
apples and the eating, and (2) relation between the eating and 
the boys—each one of which relations I shall offer on occasion 
as perhaps the meaning of the passive voice; but on this occa¬ 
sion neither seems to me to be the one I really care to find. 
Relation (2), which finds expression in the preposition “by,” 
is ipso facto of presumably a secondary interest; for, so far as 
I have noted up to date, the preposition never names a dominant 
relation, which to me appears to be the reason why we cannot 
turn a preposition into an assertive verb—the namer of a domi¬ 
nant relation—though perhaps all prepositions can be para¬ 
phrased by unassertative verbal forms.* Thus, for instance, 
“A woman between her husband and her son” declines to be 
made over into “A woman who betweened the two,” the coined 
verb impressing one as more than merely a neologism. 
Moreover, granted that my apples have been eaten, it’s to 
me a minor matter who has eaten them, or what relation holds 
between the eating and whoever it may be. I cannot rank re¬ 
lation, then, between the eating and the boys as what I’m mainly 
^anxious to discover. 
As to relation (1), although of greater interest than (2), it 
is hardly what you would expect me first of all to look for— 
is accordingly, as well as (2), of secondary interest. In the 
doubtless prior, long familiar active voice, “The boys eat my 
apples” tells you what relation I experience in thinking from the 
boys to the apples—that of actor and actee. When accordingly, 
* E. g “with” may be replaced by “accompanying,” “after” by 
'“following,” etc. 
