The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

relative genera, but are also
themselves relative, and are rendered in relation to one and the
same thing, as e.g. conation is conation for something, and desire
is desire of something, and double is double of something, i.e.
double of half: also in dealing (2) with any terms which, though
they be not relative terms at all, yet have their substance, viz.
the things of which they are the states or affections or what not,
indicated as well in their definition, they being predicated of
these things. Thus e.g. ‘odd’ is a ‘number containing a middle’:
but there is an ‘odd number’: therefore there is a
‘number-containing-a-middle number’. Also, if snubness be a
concavity of the nose, and there be a snub nose, there is therefore
a ‘concave-nose nose’.
    People sometimes appear to produce this result, without really
producing it, because they do not add the question whether the
expression ‘double’, just by itself, has any meaning or no, and if
so, whether it has the same meaning, or a different one; but they
draw their conclusion straight away. Still it seems, inasmuch as
the word is the same, to have the same meaning as well.
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14
    We have said before what kind of thing ‘solecism’ is.’ It is
possible both to commit it, and to seem to do so without doing so,
and to do so without seeming to do so. Suppose, as Protagoras used
to say that menis (’wrath’) and pelex (’helmet’) are masculine:
according to him a man who calls wrath a ‘destructress’ (oulomenen)
commits a solecism, though he does not seem to do so to other
people, where he who calls it a ‘destructor’ (oulomenon) commits no
solecism though he seems to do so. It is clear, then, that any one
could produce this effect by art as well: and for this reason many
arguments seem to lead to solecism which do not really do so, as
happens in the case of refutations.
    Almost all apparent solecisms depend upon the word ‘this’
(tode), and upon occasions when the inflection denotes neither a
masculine nor a feminine object but a neuter. For ‘he’ (outos)
signifies a masculine, and ‘she’ (aute) feminine; but ‘this’
(touto), though meant to signify a neuter, often also signifies one
or other of the former: e.g. ‘What is this?’ ‘It is Calliope’; ‘it
is a log’; ‘it is Coriscus’. Now in the masculine and feminine the
inflections are all different, whereas in the neuter some are and
some are not. Often, then, when ‘this’ (touto) has been granted,
people reason as if ‘him’ (touton) had been said: and likewise also
they substitute one inflection for another. The fallacy comes about
because ‘this’ (touto) is a common form of several inflections: for
‘this’ signifies sometimes ‘he’ (outos) and sometimes ‘him’
(touton). It should signify them alternately; when combined with
‘is’ (esti) it should be ‘he’, while with ‘being’ it should be
‘him’: e.g. ‘Coriscus (Kopiskos) is’, but ‘being Coriscus’
(Kopiskon). It happens in the same way in the case of feminine
nouns as well, and in the case of the so-called ‘chattels’ that
have feminine or masculine designations. For only those names which
end in o and n, have the designation proper to a chattel, e.g.
xulon (’log’), schoinion (’rope’); those which do not end so have
that of a masculine or feminine object, though some of them we
apply to chattels: e.g. askos (’wineskin’) is a masculine noun, and
kline (’bed’) a feminine. For this reason in cases of this kind as
well there will be a difference of the same sort between a
construction with ‘is’ (esti) or with ‘being’ (to einai). Also,
Solecism resembles in a certain way those refutations which are
said to depend on the like expression of unlike things. For, just
as there we come upon a material solecism, so here we come upon a
verbal: for ‘man’ is both a ‘matter’ for expression and also a
‘word’: and so is white’.
    It is clear, then, that for solecisms we must try to construct
our argument out of the aforesaid inflections.
    These, then, are the types of contentious arguments, and the
subdivisions of those types, and the methods for conducting them
aforesaid. But it makes no little difference if the materials for
putting the question be arranged in a certain manner with a view to
concealment, as in the case of dialectics. Following then upon what
we have said, this must be discussed