A thing may be marked by many mark-words, as ‘the (never to be forgotten) day,’ ‘the (having to me shown so many kindnesses) man is yet alive.’
A long string of mark-words may, however, be found awkward, and so we may take a name-token who for the man, and, instead of the words ‘having to me shown so many kindnesses,’ say, ‘who showed me so many kindnesses.’
Who or that is the name-token for menkind, and which or that for beings of lower life or of no life, as ‘the man who’ or ‘the bird or flower which was in the garden.’
Who and which are used in the asking of questions—‘Who is he?’ ‘What is that?’
The name-token should follow close on the forename for the sake of clearness. ‘Alfred sold, for a shilling, the bat which William gave him,’ not ‘Alfred sold the bat for a shilling which William gave him,’ if it was the bat that was given to him by William.
These mark-words take the stead of thing-names, and are Name-stead words, and clear the speech of repetitions of the names. The baby may say ‘Baby wants the doll,’ but at length learns to say ‘I want the doll’; or ‘Papa, take baby,’ and afterwards ‘You take me’; or ‘Give baby the whip—the whip is baby’s,’ for ‘It is mine.’
A man may be beholden to the speech in three ways:—
- (1) He may be the speaker, called the First Person;
- (2) He may be spoken to, the Second Person (the to-spoken thing);
- (3) He may be spoken of, the Third Person (the of-spoken thing);
and some mark-words are for the marking of things without their names, both in tale and their sundry beholdenness to the speech:—
| Single. | Somely. |
| 1st Person. | |
| I. | We. |
| 2nd Person. | |
| Thou. | Ye, you. |
| 3rd Person. | |
| He, she, it. | |