ABSTRACT
It must also be mentioned here that our languages contain 8. certain number of substantives of a highly general signification, thing, body, being. But their" general" signification is not of the same order as that of adjectives: they very often serve as comprehensive terms for a number of undoubtedly substantival ideas (all these things, said instead of enumerating books, paper, garments, etc.)-this use is very frequent in philosophic and abstract scientific thinking. In everyday speech they may be loosely used instead of a special substantive which is either not found in the language or else is momentarily forgotten (cp. such words as thingummybob, G. dingsda). Otherwise they rarely occur except in combination with an adjective, and then they are often little more than a kind of grammatical device for substantivizing the adjective like the E. one. (Ones, in the new ones, is a substitute for the substantive mentioned a few moments before; in her young ones, said of a bird, it supplies the want of a substantive corresponding to children). This leads to their use in compound pronouns: something, nothing, quelquechose, ingenting, somebody, etc. On the other hand, when once a language has a certain way of forming adjectives, it may extend the type to highly specialized adjectives, e.g. in a pink-eyed cat, a ten-roomed house, which combinations have been advanced against my whole theory: there are more cats than pink-eyed beings, etc. This, however, does not seem to me to invalidate the general truth of the theory as here explained: it must be remembered also that the real adjectival part of such combinations is pink or ten, respectively.
