Owen—Relations Expressed by the Passive Voice. 109 
“He was made-a-present-of-a-cane” the hyphenated words are 
felt to operate essentially as one—as strongly hinted by the 
would-be humorous equivalent “He was caned/’ and by the far 
from would-be humorous academic “was certificated” and the 
journalistic “circularized”—they seem to countenance my sens¬ 
ing of “are eaten by” as also virtually but a single word. This 
headline also, taken from a local daily, “John Doe's Where¬ 
abouts Would Like to be Known by His Wife/' which 
seems to be intended as a passive paraphrase of “John Doe’s 
wife would like to know his whereabouts,” suggests that in the 
active voice “would-like-to-know” was fused in mind—a neces¬ 
sary preparation for the passive, also fused, “would-like-to-be- 
known.”* 
Choice of “cases” for related terms 
This I can most advantageously examine after comment on 
the use of cases with the active voice, recalling that the case- 
sign of its subject—formerly a word complete, i. e. the nomi¬ 
native ending “s”—at first meant “always very active later, 
“active in the action momentarily considered”—ergo actor; last 
of all, accordingly, “first thought of” in the mental operation 
which is indicated by the active voice—or even also by the 
passive voice—i. e. first term or subject and that by no means 
always in an action, e. g. “Brown is ill.” 
The accusative might have reached a corresponding function, 
* It was not apparently appreciated that in passive thinking there 
was no excuse for meddling with the ‘'knowing.” In a passive sen¬ 
tence rightly formed “to know”—the nucleary object of the active 
sentence, used as subject of the passive—would not suffer change; ac¬ 
cordingly, “To know his (John Doe’s) whereabouts would be liked by 
John Doe’s (his) wife.” 
f The nominative inflection of the noun in predicate position, 
though by no means rational, is thinkable as imitating the inflection 
of the adjective, which as an adjunct takes that case to show associa¬ 
tion with the nominative subject, and retains it rather naturally in 
the predicate position. I imagine it however as originating rather 
in the sentence which may be reversed without essential change in the 
relation indicated; e. g. “The King (of England) is (identical with) 
the Emperor (of India)”—a sentence of which either end, canoe-like, 
is prepared to lead. (See further p. 36.) 
