Without listing all the other functions of English substantive expressions, we can say that the class-meaning common to all the lexical forms in this form-class is ' that which can be the performer of an action, the undergoer of an action, the center from which a relations holds good, the possesor of objects', and so on. Whether we can sum this up in a shorter formula, depends upon our resources of terminology; for instance, we can sum up the class-meaning just given, under the term 'object'.
- Bloomfield (1935), a pag.267