or is it as distinct from “I” as either is from “you” or “he"?—­both attitudes are illustrated in language; moreover, does “we” include you to whom I speak or not?—­“inclusive” and “exclusive” forms); what may be the general scheme of orientation, the so-called demonstrative categories ("this” and “that” in an endless procession of nuances);[76] how frequently the form expresses the source or nature of the speaker’s knowledge (known by actual experience, by hearsay,[77] by inference); how the syntactic relations may be expressed in the noun (subjective and objective; agentive, instrumental, and person affected;[78] various types of “genitive” and indirect relations) and, correspondingly, in the verb (active and passive; active and static; transitive and intransitive; impersonal, reflexive, reciprocal, indefinite as to object, and many other special limitations on the starting-point and end-point of the flow of activity).  These details, important as many of them are to an understanding of the “inner form” of language, yield in general significance to the more radical group-distinctions that we have set up.  It is enough for the general reader to feel that language struggles towards two poles of linguistic expression—­material content and relation—­and that these poles tend to be connected by a long series of transitional concepts.

[Footnote 74:  A term borrowed from Slavic grammar.  It indicates the lapse of action, its nature from the standpoint of continuity.  Our “cry” is indefinite as to aspect, “be crying” is durative, “cry put” is momentaneous, “burst into tears” is inceptive, “keep crying” is continuative, “start in crying” is durative-inceptive, “cry now and again” is iterative, “cry out every now and then” or “cry in fits and starts” is momentaneous-iterative.  “To put on a coat” is momentaneous, “to wear a coat” is resultative.  As our examples show, aspect is expressed in English by all kinds of idiomatic turns rather than by a consistently worked out set of grammatical forms.  In many languages aspect is of far greater formal significance than tense, with which the naive student is apt to confuse it.]

[Footnote 75:  By “modalities” I do not mean the matter of fact statement, say, of negation or uncertainty as such, rather their implication in terms of form.  There are languages, for instance, which have as elaborate an apparatus of negative forms for the verb as Greek has of the optative or wish-modality.]

[Footnote 76:  Compare page 97.]

[Transcriber’s note:  Footnote 76 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 2948.]

[Footnote 77:  It is because of this classification of experience that in many languages the verb forms which are proper, say, to a mythical narration differ from those commonly used in daily intercourse.  We leave these shades to the context or content ourselves with a more explicit and roundabout mode of expression, e.g., “He is dead, as I happen to know,” “They say he is dead,” “He must be dead by the looks of things.”]