Word Economy

CONTENTS		Page
	PREFACE	7
I .	INTRODUCTORY	9
II .	STRUCTURAL ECONOMY	20
III.	VERBAL ECONOMY	38
IV.	WORD FORMATION	80

PART III . VERBAL ECONOMY

The Analytical Principle

The study of vocabularies is the prerogative of the etymologist who focuses attention on the life-histories of particular words rather than upon general principles of vocabulary construction. 38 The philologist, who does concern himself with the structure of language, is chiefly interested in problems relating to grammar. As a result, the study of distribution, which is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Word Economy, falls between two learned stools.
Vocabularies may be divided, as grammatical systems are, into two types -- the analytic and the inflected. That is to say, their constructions may be characterized by the creation of fresh symbols to express a complex idea or by the use of a combination of symbols. The fusion of I , will, and love into the grammatical form amabo is paralleled semantically by the construction of subscribe out of give money to, of quadruped out of four-footed animal, of destination out of place to which one is going, and so forth. The only point of difference is that grammatical inflections tend t0 be more systematic and are for this reason more easily mastered.
Despite its bulk, the vocabulary of English is generalized t0 a surprising degree in comparison with the vocabularies of other languages. This tendency is most in evidence in the analytic development of verb forms that has already been discussed. Consider a few of the un-ambiguous substitutions performed by go. We may ' go against the law ' (break), ' go against an army ' (attack), ' go from church ' (leave), ' go down with disease' (contract), ' go from sight ' (disappear), 'go in front of ' (precede), ' go into a question ' (examine), ' go into the house' (enter), 'go off with a lover ' (elope), 'go on a horse' (ride), ' go to bed ' (retire), ' go up a mountain ' (climb), ' go with a friend ' (accompany).
In most other languages, each of these situations would have its uniquely appropriate verb. Take, for example, the French translation of get out used in a variety of contexts. For ' get out stains ' there is enlever, for ' get out of a book' prendre, for ' get out clothes from a drawer' sortir, for ' get out of England 'quitter, for ' get out of a difficulty ' se tirer, for ' get out of the train ' descendre, for 'get out of a habit ' se défaire, for ' get out of a punishment ' soustraire.
The danger of this tendency in English, and more particularly in American English, is that precision and clarity may be lost by an over-generalization of the idioms. The ubiquitous part played by make and fix in transatlantic conversation is an illustration of this point.
Outside the verb system the English language displays the same readiness to manufacture general terms. Although French has adopted a more enlightened attitude towards certain groups of words,¹ English is on the whole far more alive to generalizing possibilities. It is the specialization of the French vocabulary that gives it its peculiar literary precision. Thus the series of similar objects which, in English, receive the single designation head, are distinguished severally in French as the head of a person, téte, of a table, haut boat, of a bedstead, chevet, of an arrow, fer, and so on, through a dozen different contexts. Leg is similarly differentiated and separate words are found for the legs which belong to persons, animals, boots, poultry, furniture, mutton, and beef.

The Basic Vocabulary,

The French would claim that a certain quality of precision is achieved by this specializing technique. But precision is lost as frequently as it is gained by multiplicity of terms. Vocabularies are built up in a largely fortuitous manner, and it is seldom that a cluster of closely associated words avoid overlapping. Stylistic caprice then becomes the criterion of correct usage, rather than semantic content. In English, for example, there are five words which cover various aspects of destruction : harm, hurt, injury, damage, mutilation. It is possible to construct a sentence in which any of these words might be used. We may say The initiated pass through the fire without harm, hurt, injury, damage, mutilation. But with each of these words sentences may be constructed in which they are not inter-changeable. In the following examples, only the word used is appropriate to the context : He angered you but the hurt was mine. I apologized and no harm was done. The punishment was that of mutilation. The fire did damage to the pictures. The victim sustained many injuries. Similar difficulties arise in connection with the strip-stripe-band-belt group. Such infelicitous specialization can lead to nothing but confusion.
Another danger of specialization is that it may easily degenerate into a wanton complexity. This over-elaboration is not confined to the pedantry of the study. It exists in a more plebian form under the name of jargon. No jargon is more exacting than that imposed on the devotee of sport. Consider, for example, the following account of how baseball supporters describe the game : " It is possible to have all these expressions for hitting a ball with attendant circumstances : he pummelled a liner to Devore, larruped a home-run to right, banged the ball on the nose, punched a hit to right, smashed a drive, whacked a grounder, slapped an easy grounder, planked a sizzling one, spiked a one-base shot to centre, rammed a single to left, lammed a single past Larry's ear, slammed a single to centre, whaled a home-run, etc ".¹

Pedagogical Seminary,

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If the dictionary were pruned of some of its more extravagant blooms no one would feel linguistically poorer. Who, for example, -- to take a random selection from the Concise Oxford Dictionary -- would wish to reprieve such words as hapaxlegomenon, nidify, and ustulation, if sentence of death were passed upon them by an enterprising public ?
In literary exposition every verbal trick is an asset. For emotive purposes, therefore, a vocabulary of highly specialized words is more rich in possibilities than a vocabulary whose word-building relies upon analysis. It lends itself to greater associational nuance and has the advantages of variety and concision. No doubt the ideal literary medium, if it could be constructed according to rule, would combine the aspects of the Russian verb, so aesthetically pleasing to those who have served the apprenticeship of a classical education¹ with the affixes and infixes of Icelandic inflection, and the word-forming licence of Mr. James Joyce. Such a language would make available the maximum range of emotive effect, though there might still be some who questioned Whether the resulting tendency to breed sesquipedalian hybrids made for a happier style than the opposite technique of restraint which has its supreme example in the English translation of the Bible.

Aspects and the Russian Verb,

But if we leave aside aesthetic values, and take a utilitarian view of language, in which clarity of expression and ease of acquirement are all-important considerations, the merits of a specialized A vocabulary are no longer obvious. Men of letters may, if they choose, Haunt their children in ' perambulators ', but the plain man is content for them to be taken out in a ' baby-carriage '.

The Philosophic Language

The analytic principle recommends itself as the basis of an artificially constructed language, whether it be intended for international communication or as an instrument for scientific thought. It plays an important part in the numerous schemes that have been devised for a ' philosophic ' language¹ though for this purpose scientific agglomeration is more favoured than the stringing together of separate units. The philosophic language invented by Bishop Wilkins demonstrates how an analytic vocabulary may be systematically constructed.² He built up his vocabulary from forty genera, sub-divided into species, which were then further modified by grammatical and other notions. The following tabulation illustrates how conjugates were formed on his system :


Sense of Root Word	Sense of Modification.	Sense of Conjugate.
KIND	Male	Bull, bullock, steer.
	Female	Cow, heifer, steer.
	Young	Calf
	Voice	Bellow, low
	Diminutive	Runt
	Aggregate	Herd
	Officer	Cowherd

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But Wilkins, unlike other originators in the same field, was fully alive to the limitations of systematic word formation. He attempts to symbolize only simple objects and ideas with units. " Others that are of a more mixed and complicated signification ", he explains³ " are to be expressed periphrasically . . . such words only are absolutely necessary for such a design as are purely simple ; which, if they could be accurately distinguished, would be much fewer than those here enumerated. But for the preventing of frequent and large periphrases, it may be convenient to take in some others that are not purely simple ". As a practical orientation of the analytic principle this is excellent, though the theoretical position must be challenged.

Histoire de la Langue Universelle,

Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophic language.

Ibid.,

Analysis, in so far as it is established as a natural linguistic tendency, is an arbitrary affair, important only for the practical issues involved. But when it becomes a conscious technique for artificial simplification, problems of theoretical interest are raised. Before constructing the foundations of an ideally analytic system, it must be decided whether the analysis which reflects itself in language is fundamental in the sense that the simpler units correspond in some way to a schematic disintegration of the universe, 46 or whether it is purely a symbolic convenience, governed by more or less ad hoc considerations. If there does exist a primary set of facts or ideas into which all our complex cognitive and perceptive experience may be resolved, then presumably the efficiency of a vocabulary may be measured by the extent to which it conforms with such an analysis. If, on the other hand, linguistic generalization can be carried to no a priori conclusion, and is merely a matter of effectively disposed symbols, then there arises the question : what exactly takes place when we eliminate one word by combining two or three others together ?
We have already seen how Wilkins believed that there were a certain number of ' purely simple ' words from which, theoretically the complete design of a philosophic language might be developed. This belief was common to all the idealists who seriously entertained the project of a philosophic language. In their view it was axiomatic that the universe could be reduced, like a mathematical statement, to its simplest terms, and they saw no reason why it should not be possible to devise a set of ideographic symbols that could be used, in Leibnitz's phrase, as a ' calculus of reasoning '.
Descartes was the first to formulate this idea of an ideal universal language,¹ but he did not develop it. The suggestion was taken up by Leibnitz half a century later, and continued to bear barren fruit in the shape of a series of unsuccessful a priori languages until the beginning of the present century. Its successor is to be found in the systems of Symbolic Logic, devised by Russell, Whitehead and others to clarify a particular approach to philosophical problems.

But modern logistic departs in two important essentials from the tradition dominating the projects for an a priori world language. And these two points of difference offer a plausible account of why the philosophic language movement has become discredited.
In the first place the symbol systems of the logico-analytic philosophers are confined to the strict needs of logic and do not attempt to cover the subject matter of science. Since the time of Leibnitz the various branches of scientific knowledge have been developing their own symbolic technique and selecting their primitive concepts to accord with theories which only experts are competent to assess. For such a task the equipment of the logician is inadequate and his premises irrelevant. Leibnitz and his disciples attempted to oversimplify scientific thought and terminology, and to fix a symbolization which must constantly be remodelled to meet fresh needs.
The other respect in which Symbolic Logic differs from philosophic language systems is in the importance attached to the primitive ideas. For the language-makers, the simple constituents of thought were fixed by the nature of things ; by the analytic philosophers, the simple units are claimed as valid only within the system for which they were designed¹

Survey of Symbolic Logic,

Interpretation and Analysis,

Psyche,

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A detailed discussion of the arguments against the existence of predetermined primitive concepts would be outside the scope of this book. Nor is it necessary to adduce such arguments in order to discredit the notion of a philosophic language on Cartesian lines. As Professor Couturat has pointed out,¹ an ideographic system, while easing the burden of memorization, imposes a considerable mental strain in the constant manipulation of complicated definitions which it requires. It renders the normal processes of psittascism or symbolic thought almost impossible, and so paralyses the mental activity it was intended to stimulate. As not infrequently happens, the logicians arrived at an absurd conclusion through neglecting the elementary facts of psychology.

Plea for an International Language,

It is, however, possible, without dogmatizing unduly, to suggest certain general considerations which make the 'fundamentalist' position appear highly dubious. No symbol system does reflect and probably no symbol system could reflect, the structure of the outside world or even of the mind itself. And though language is a by-product of sensory ` experience, it has in turn provided the framework or mould which determines in some measure what form that experience shall take.¹ Languages vary immensely in structure and vocabulary and there is no reason why the primitive concepts indicated by one language should coincide with those which would emerge from the analytic study of another. Variations in the relative distribution of nouns and adjectives may alone be sufficient to shift the focus of the unanalysable elements. And even within the confines of a single language, the basis of definition is determined by the particular aspect of knowledge with which we are, for the moment, concerned. The ' species ’ on which the botanist’s classification is based may be resolved in the chemist’s test tube into a variety of substances ; and the simple elements of the chemist’s world will be turned by the physicist’s electroscope into a complex system of energy. Each account of phenomena has its legitimate starting point. And as there seems to be no means of escape from the bias attaching to individual systems, linguistic or scientific, it is difficult to see how an absolute analysis of the constituents of the universe is possible.

The Meaning of Meaning,

The Modern Approach

It does not follow, however, from the failure of the philosophic language movement that all attempts to make language a more efficient vehicle of thought should be discouraged. The need for linguistic improvement is a real one, though the method by which improvement was sought has been found to be illusory. A systematized language would enable us to communicate more effectively ; a simplified language would enable us to communicate more internationally. But if the modern approach to the problem is to yield satisfactory results we must relinquish the attractive chimaera of an ' ideal language’ and develop reforms along more practical lines.
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It may not be feasible to reduce scientific terminology to a scheme for which a priori sanction can be claimed, but concentration on the lacunae of scientific notation might revolutionize methodology. Here is a field which offers real scope to an enterprising orthologist combining linguistic orientation with the requisite technical knowledge.
Professor Levy has declared that " notation is indeed the very life-blood of science ",¹ and his claim is a reasonable one when we consider how, throughout the history of science, notational development has preceded advances in knowledge. But for the abbreviations invented by Diophantus of Alexandria, we should have had no science of Algebra ; mathematics emerged from the chrysallis stage with the adoption of Arabic numerals ; inorganic chemistry took an immense stride forward when Mendeléef drew up his Periodic Table ; Mathematical Logic dates from Boole’s symbolic system. And, as Professor Levy himself points out, " our heritage from Newton would have been a much poorer thing but for the differential calculus, as our indebtedness to Einstein is enriched by the tensor notation ".

The Notation of Movement,

But notational development has been left hitherto to random inspiration and the needs of the moment. Its key importance has been insufficiently recognized, and there has been no attempt to generalize principles of construction or to lay down methods of procedure. The remedy for this -- and the task should not be an impossible one -- is to erect a science of notation, which will take deliberate stock of the symbolic situation, and marshal a technique to deal with notational deficiencies and anticipate the requirements of sciences yet unborn.
It would be rash to prophesy how far, and in what direction, symbolic processes might be developed with such an equipment, but there is certainly no lack of experimental material, as even casual reflection will show. Colour, for example, is still in need of a satisfactory working notation ; the psychologists require assistance in notating the emotions ; and, to venture into less familiar territory, a notation of mechanical inventions
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might provide the clue to further improvements and novelties.
A programme containing items such as these, though necessarily lacking the. ideal comprehensiveness of a philosophic language, would perhaps be no less far-reaching in its effects.
Scientific notation, however, does not exhaust the possibilities of linguistic reform, Backed by the necessary international sanctions, it does meet the demand for an adequate medium for science ; but it does not deal with the demand for a clarification of language as an instrument of thought, and a simplification of it for purposes of international communication. Here, too, the a priori approach has been superseded by more practical proposals based on the linguistic material already to hand.
A technique of definition, such as that suggested in The Meaning of Meaning, will clearly play an important part in any readjustment of linguistic habits. But as this bears on the way in which language should be used rather than on the form that language should take, it is scarcely relevant to the present discussion.
We have seen that in adapting language
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to the needs of science, the problem is to expand the existing vocabulary by fresh notations and scalar possibilities. In making it a more precise instrument of thought, we are faced with the reverse problem of reduction.
There is something paradoxical about this. Language is an inventory of human experience. It might, therefore, be argued that the more minutely we catalogue each item, the more exact the inventory will be. There is a certain plausibility about this argument, but it does not take into account the necessity, if we are working on an existing language, of weeding out badly organized word groups and eliminating the emotive and stylistic elements. Nor does it allow for the fact that highly specialized words are not essential to minute description. If we have writing-table at our command, it is nothing but affectation to add bureau and escritoire to the vocabulary. They may embellish the object but they do not make it any plainer.
Now the ‘writing-table ’ method of description provides a better basis of thought than the ‘ bureau' method for two reasons. In the first place it relates
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writing-tables to all the other kinds of table and so helps to systematize our knowledge. This fact may seem unim- portant as displayed in the simple and very concrete illustration we have been considering, but it is of inestimable value in more abstract fields of reference. In the second place, being more actively descriptive, it provides an antidote to that habit of using words without ade- quate reference, which opens the door inevitably to mystification and word- magic. The psittacism advocated by Professor Couturat is in some measure essential if we are to communicate at all, but there is a point beyond which it becomes excessive and merely enables us to attach word-labels to objects we have insufficiently identified. The tendency away from descriptive, and towards arbitrary symbolism -- as seen, for example, in the shifting emphasis of pronunciation in compound words -- is one which, for psychological reasons, we shall never wholly counteract. As descriptive terms become familiar, they lose their primary significance and are eventually accepted as the names of particular objects or events. One suspects, too, that the
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process sometimes takes on a more whole- sale character, with the result that argu- ments derived parrotwise from some acquaintance or the newspapers are reproduced almost word for word as a conditioned response to the appropriate questioning. Nevertheless, a symbol system built up on description does provide the wary with an avenue of escape from the worst forms of verbal fixation.
The problem, when once we have rejected the idea of god-given concepts, is to decide how far this process of descriptive analysis may profitably be carried.
ln modifying an existing language, theoretical considerations cannot be given much weight, since the selection of a vocabulary in such a case must be dictated by the nature of the material. The task is to discover how far the language will permit descriptive analysis to go, and not to assess the ideal limits of description.
The chief question is that of procedure. The words in any language may be classified in a hierarchy, starting with the most general notions and descending through a graded series to the most
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particular.¹ Not only therefore, do words stand for different references, but they stand for references at different levels. I may have occasion, for example, in varying circumstances, to describe the same object as a ‘ Baby Austin ’, a ‘ motor car ’, a ‘ vehicle ’, or an ‘ obstruction’. This factor of levels is an all-important one, because it is on their relation to one another that the efficiency of a language largely depends. By arranging the vocabulary in a hierarchy such as has been described, it becomes possible to see what combination of levels will dispense with other levels.

The Basic Vocabulary.

But though we are not concerned with an ideal disposition of levels, we do require the guidance of a standard, and the difficulty is to discover some method by which the ideal limits of descriptive analysis may be determined. Can we find any principles which would enable us to dis- tribute our words wisely over the field of reference in a vocabulary constructed out of the void ?
We may take as axiomatic the avoidance of unsymbolized references,
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synonyms, overlapping clusters, and puns. But this does not throw light on the question of levels of symbolization, nor does it offer any constructive suggestion. Let us suppose that we are looking at a town, with Utopian speech at our command. How shall we describe what we see before us ? Shall we distinguish houses, theatres, offices and palaces ? Shall we introduce a common denominator and talk of residential buildings, dramatic buildings, business buildings, and royal buildings ? Shall we analyse further and refer to what is before us in terms of a functional adaptation of bricks and mortar, of windows, chimneys, and doors ? Or shall we, perhaps, reduce the bricks themselves to the substances of which they are composed ?
lf language is to consult human convenience -- and being a tool fashioned by the human mind for its own purposes, this can scarcely be denied -- it should symbolize objects, as far as possible, at the level of our preceptions. This is the first canon of linguistic construction. Facts that cannot be inferred directly from contact with the object should not be covered by the unit symbols. Thus a
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‘ table’ might well be so referred to because, when once the elementary classification of objects has been mastered, there is no great difficulty in recognising it as such. But it is not nearly so simple a matter to distinguish a man as a ‘ father', unless one is acquainted with the details of his private life. The ‘ father’ notion would, therefore, be best expressed as an adjectival modification of the unit ' animal ’, or perhaps of the compound ' male animal ’. Similarly, facts that are ascertained only as a result of microscopic investigation, though they may themselves be regarded as units, should not be used in the descriptive analysis of objects which are at the level of ordinary sense-perception. The specialist, be it understood, has his own requirements which must be dealt with apart from the treatment of language in its more general aspect.
The chief difficulty in making sense-perceptions the basis of symbolization lies in separating them from the symbolic frames by which they are commonly bounded. As has already been pointed out, what we see and how we see it is largely conditioned by the language in
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whose traditions we have been educated¹ If then, a language is to be constructed in which the symbols conform to the units and aggregates that we perceive, precautions must be taken not to perpetuate the particular linguistic bias implanted in the inventors by their early training.

Language,

The limiting effects of a language are, however, operative in respect of judgments and abstract relations rather than in the actual perception of objects. The fact, for example, that there is no preposition in English for 'under ’ and “touching ’² does not affect in any way our grasp of such a spatial relation ; but as Bentham discovered, the absence of neutral words in which to describe various acts, has prejudged those acts for one generation after another.³ Thus the pejorative implications of ' fornication ’ and ’ adultery ’ have provided a ready-made moral judgment that has served our nation for centuries.

The Meaning of Meaning,

Collected Works

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This intrusion into our symbolization of subjective judgments about the events and objects symbolized, is fatal to clear thinking. We may, therefore, formulate as our second canon of linguistic construction the principle that mental attitudes should be symbolized separately from their objects. The distinction between the ‘ miserly ’ man who ‘ hoards ’ money out of ‘ avarice’ and the ' thrifty ’ man who ' saves ’ it out of ‘ prudence ’ should be indicated by changing the subjective qualification of a neutral statement, about a man who “ puts money on one side ’ either out of ‘ love of gold ’ or for ‘ love of his family ’. In the same way, whether we commend a child for its ‘ modesty’ or chide it for its ' diffidence ’ depends on our attitude to the fact that it has not a very high opinion of itself. A well-designed vocabulary would not permit of this confusion between what the speaker observes and how he interprets the fruits of his observation. Nor would it allow the reactions of the observer to appear as belonging to the activities of the object, as for example, when we say in English that certain conduct ‘disgusts us ’. It would be no less absurd to say
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that a man ‘hates us’ when we have feelings of dislike for him. Yet there are philosophers who believe, because of this crazy symbolization, that disgust is to be studied in the external world rather than in our own heads.

-- This section . . . 64 - 72 . . . will be further edited shortly. --

Finally, we come to our third canon, which is that descriptive analysis should make the fullest possible use of quantitative relations, whether of number, as in house, village, town ; of size, as in dwarf, man, giant ; or of degree, as in whisper, talk, shout. At every level in the classification the measuring-rod should be applied. Thus scalar notations may be used to supplement the hierarchical divisions. The main classification may give ambulation as a form of animal movement, but when the scale is applied, we get crawling, walking, running, and so on, in addition. To the creator of a synthetic language belongs the task of devising a uniform notation for quantity and applying it wherever possible ; to the reformer of existing languages, the no less important one of inquiring how far quantity is the real differentiating factor in words apparently 64 distinct. On analysis a blow is recognised as a big knock, a trickle becomes a small flow, and some would go so far as to describe a wound as a partial kill.
Definition in terms of quantity cannot be complete unless it includes the relation of opposition.¹ In fact, a proper understanding ot the nature of opposites is essential to the construction of notational scales. The linguistic significance of opposition has been obscured owing to the simple view prevailing among logicians that it is the relationship existing between quality and not-quality. If we do not subscribe to this view, but hold that opposites require more complex definition, it is clear that the notation 65 of opposites would, if established as unambiguous, enable us to form automatically a wide number of terms that would otherwise stand in need of individual attention.

One would expect to find a complete and satisfactory account of opposites in the logic books, which could be applied without difficulty to linguistic requirements. Unfortunately this is not the case. The findings of Logic are sadly inadequate to the matter in hand. Preoccupied with the question of opposition as it relates to propositions, logicians have neglected the opposition of words ; while those who do give space to this aspect of the problem devote most of it to discussing whether negatives are limited by a universe of discourse, and whether, if not, the negative has any meaning at all. Incompatibility is referred to as an enigmatic factor distinguishing opposition from mere negation; degrees of difference receive passing mention. But of the different classes of opposites, and of the kinds of things to which opposition may be ascribed, little or nothing is said. On these questions, so essential to the 66 subject, nothing of value has been contributed by the logicians.¹

The view that the only true contradictory or opposite is that produced by the negation of a quality, since a quality and its negation are together all-embracing and mutually exclusive, is inadequate because it leaves out of account just those very relationships which are universally held to constitute opposition. It negation is the only accredited sort of opposite, and contraries,ie., comparable but separate qualities, are all at the same level of difference, then ‘ white ’ is no more the opposite of ‘ black ’ than ‘ red ’ is, and ‘ north ’ no more the opposite of ‘ south ’ than ‘ south ’ is of ‘ west ’ ; while ‘not-greatest’ would be the opposite of ' greatest ’ and 'least ’ would be classed without distinction of any sort among a number of other contraries such as ' greater ’, ' great ’, ‘ less ’ -- a most unsatisfactory conclusion at which to arrive. Negations are rightly called contradictories, but let there be no 67 confusion between contradictories and opposites. This confusion has possibly in part arisen from the fact that in some cases the negative or contradictory coincides with the opposite, as in ‘ visible ’ and ' not visible ’, ‘ asleep ’ and ‘ not asleep ’, where the opposites ‘ visible ’ and ‘ invisible ’, ‘ asleep ’ and ' awake ’, correspond exactly to what Bosanquet calls the significant negative.
The main linguistic interest centres on the question whether or no it is possible to dehne unambiguously in terms of opposition. If so, what limits must be imposed on such definition to keep it from ambiguity ? We should all arrive at ‘ dark ’ as the opposite of ‘ light ’, but perhaps we should not be quite so certain that ‘ night ’ is the opposite of ’ day ’ or ‘ receipt ’ of ‘ account ’. The value of opposites for notational purposes depends on our being able to find some common ground of explanation or definition for the extraordinarily diverse pairs which in ordinary parlance are referred to as opposites.
This analysis, which provides an important contribution to linguistic theory, has been carried out by C. K. Ogden in his 68 recent work on opposition¹ By making an elaborate survey of twenty-five different pairs of so—called opposites, Mr. Ogden is able to demonstrate that direction is the key to every type of opposition. He distinguishes between opposites that are divided by a cut (Right and Left) and opposites that form extremes of a scale (Top and Bottom). " Either side of a cut ", he explains, “ may also be quantified, but where two scales placed end to end divide at a neutral point, the bottom or neutral point ot either scale does not give rise to a sensational or linguistic opposite ". Acid and Alkali are a typical example of double-scale opposition. Psychological opposites are said to be “ translated emotionally into directional terms ", and the only forms of opposition that are not amenable to the scale and the cut are opposites by definition and tictions. Mr. Ogden has used this analysis as the basis for an ingenious system of oppositional notation, which marks an innovation in the technique of lexicography. His symbolism could not be adopted in a synthetic language, but some 69 at least of his differentia might profitably be reflected in a verbal notation.

Opposition.

The type of opposite generated by a scale is not necessarily determined by the nature of what is scaled; it may be a matter of linguistic convenience. The ‘ use ’ scale, for example, is divided into three sets of opposites in the following way :

          Useful <—————> Useless
                       \
                        \  
                Harmless <————> Harmful

In considering any pair of opposites it is important to make it clear in what terms the scale is to be interpreted. WVhen talking of colour opposites, we may be referring to pigments or psychological effects ; our hot-cold scale may be a measure of heat or of hot and cold sensations.
The notion of opposites is relevant only to material which is in some way amenable to a scale or a cut. But objects can be graded in a scale only by virtue of measurable qualities which they are said to 70 possess. Thus a compound is the opposite of an element in the simple-complex scale, child is the opposite of adult in the maturity scale, sea is the opposite of land in a dry-wet scale, and so on, but unless the particular scale in use is indicated opposition is an ambiguous definition or pointer when applied to objects. A notation relying on opposition to generate terms should therefore define only qualifiers as opposites. Brutes might be referred to as non-rational animals, and men as rational animals, but to give brutes the title ‘ opposite of men’ would only be ambiguous. The notion ' man ’ has many facets, each of which suggests an opposition, as man-woman, man-god, man-boy and so on.
The confusion between negation and opposition may be removed for notational purposes by reference to the scale and the cut. Definition should be by opposition and not by negation except in the case of the cut, when opposite and negative are identical. An opposite conveys a clear idea of what is to be indicated, but a negative, when applied to a scale, even when limited to a particular universe of 71 discourse, is likely to give rise to ambiguity. If ‘ large’ and ‘ not large’ were substituted for ‘ large ’ and ‘ small ’, it would be a matter of speculation whether ‘ not-large ’ stood for ‘moderate-sized ’ or ‘ small ’. But an affix implying opposition would place this beyond doubt.

An International Language

The more freely descriptive analysis is used, the more it is is possible to reduce the size of a vocabulary. for this reason, the three principles formulated for the clarification of language, bear also on its simplificaiton or international purposes.
In Basic English each of these principles has played its part, but with cerain modifications.
It is necessary in a simplified language to extend generalization beyond theoretically desirable limits in the interests of economy. Thus words at the level of furniture, garment, instrument play an important part in the Basic vocabulary. Description is made as objective as possible, chiefly by a ruthless pruning of adjectives, but the subjective factor lingers as a concession to linguistic habit in the right-wrong, good-bad, judgments. Such
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words as delicate, important, possible, serious are also expressive in some degree of a mental attitude, but it is difficult to see how this could be eliminated without a complete reconstruction of the language.
Quantity and degree, commonly discerned, are expressed almost entirely by description and special quantity Words. A gale is a ‘ strong Wind ’, a crowd is a ' great number ’ and so on. The scale is, of course, lacking, because the English language does not yet provide the material for careful graduation. Opposition has been made the basis of a mnemonic vocabulary¹ but for stylistic reasons the systematic substitution of opposites is not possible. The vocabulary does, nevertheless, rely on a discriminating use of the oppositional definition route. Ignorance, for example, is rendered in terms of knowledge, courage, in terms of fear.

The Basic Vocabulary,

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The Basic English vocabulary of 850 words was selected by the method of panoptic conjugation.¹ The Panoptic Eliminator is a radial chart, each of whose radii represents a definition route. These definition routes, twenty in number, are based on the theory of definition elaborated in The Meaning of Meaning.² The word under consideration is placed in the centre of the chart and its conjugates, arrived at by consulting each radial definition route in turn, are arranged on the periphery. The whole semantic range of a word might be shown by this method and the Panoptic chart would then become a means of locating lacunae in a vocabulary. But for Basic purposes we are concerned only with the routes which lead to single-word conjugates, since it is by these means that we discover how one word eliminates others. Each word found at the periphery is definable in terms of the word at the centre in a given relation, and this relation is indicated by the definition route employed. Thus army is a numerical modification of soldier, bitch is a dog defined in terms of sex, cottage is derived by the magnitude definition route from house. In Basic English a conjugation may be dispensed with if it can be defined by the word at the centre in combination with nine other words or less.

The Panoptic Method

The Meaning of Meaning,

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Each word considered at the centre is in turn the conjugate, via one of the 20 definition routes, of some more general word. In this way, by charting each of the 600 Basic nouns panoptically, we get a complete series of interlocking definitions, which provide the material for a hierarchical classification showing how the world levels relate to one another. A tentative classification is given on the following page. No attempt has been made to introduce a hierarchy of fictions. Their definition in terms of one another would result in a very superficial classification, while the technique for expanding them into non-fictional statements remains at too elementary a stage to be successfully used in this connection¹

Classification Tree for Basic English

[ CHART page 76 ]

There seems no good reason for employing a dichotomy in verbal classification. It is a cumbersome method of procedure and does not coincide with linguistic levels. Mammal, Insect, Bird, Reptile, and Fish are obviously at the same level of generality and it would merely be misleading to group them artificially in descending levels. By preserving a dichotomy in the early divisions, however, it is possible to ensure that any omission may be fitted into the classification without difficulty. For example, it may be decided that none of the subdivisions set forth on the chart is appropriate to a cigarette. But as a cigarette can certainly be classified as a non-machine artefact, all that is necessary is to add a fourth sub-division at the level of Container, Channel of communication, and Instrument.
Basic English is unique in its systematic approach to the problem of word economy.
The artificial languages have been concerned, to the exclusion of all other possibilities, with the simplification of grammar; and ‘ selected ’ vocabularies in the national languages, which entice the traveller with promises of a short-cut to Huency, are hopelessly lacking in method. The redundancies of Esperanto are illustrated sufficiently in the Minimum Esperanto Vocabulary, published for the use of beginners.¹ Here, in a list containing under 2000 words we find the following high-level specializations: afrank (pay postage), bask (coat-tail), cir (shoe-polish), grifel (slate-pencil), haladz (bad exhalation), swat (arrange matrimony).

A Key to Esperanto.

That these redundancies indicate a common failure on the part of the synthetic languages as a group to grapple with Word Economy is suggested by Professor Jespersen’s inadequate treatment of vocabulary questions in Novial.
Novial may fairly be assumed to contain whatever wisdom has emerged from the prolonged and bitter controversies of the experts. One finds it ignoring the main issues and claiming credit for the introduction of minor subtleties. Professor Jespersen delights in providing a distinction between verum ‘ a true thing ’, and veesp, ‘ truth ’, and he finds merit in a special word erste, for ‘ not till ’; but the importance of strict definition as a principle to ensure a uniform symbolization of references in a language which utilizes words with varying national nuances, escapes him altogether. So blind is he to any such considerations that, although he points out the ‘ essentially vague meanings ’ which must attach to words like nature, kulture, karaktere, he declares that these must be accepted as a necessary part of the foundations on which the language is erected. If this is so, there is little to commend the freedom of artificial construction. By careful pruning, simplification is introduced into the intricacies of Ido, with its bewildering mass of affixes and its complicated rules for working them ; while Zamenhof is made the subject of a number of pertinent criticisms. But Professor Jespersen has fallen far short of constructing a language sufficiently simple and comprehensive in its theory to compensate for the sacrifice of cohesion that an artificial language necessarily involves. He is more wary than his predecessors, but he has not avoided the old pitfalls. The vocabulary is overburdened with alternative renderings in a language uncouth beyond literary redemption.
What the makers of artificial languages have failed to realize is that, in Applied Linguistics, it is necessary to formulate a definite objective. lf a language is to have the merit of simplicity, it must be Without embellishment. With in the severe limitations imposed by this economy it may achieve a dignity comparable to that of the factory building whose design accords perfectly With its functional purpose. But the pursuit of literary effects by the debabelizers, in the hopes of scoring a stylistic victory, is nothing but a wild-goose chase.

PART IV . WORD FORMATION

A vocabulary which is to observe a proper economy must do more than cover the field of current usage without redundancy or ambiguity. In order to preserve that correspondence between language and thought which is the necessary condition of adequate expression, it must be capable of extension for the symbolizing of fresh references. Clearly this extension cannot be effected by the invention of entirely new words. While a language is in the formative stage, linguistic invention is exercised freely ; but when once the naming of the principal objects and events has been accomplished, this facility in word-making declines. At the advanced stage now reached by the English language scientific discoveries still occasionally lead to the invention of a new word, such as ' gas ' but the occasions are few and far between. Derivation and metaphor are the more usual means of enriching the vocabulary.
Obviously, then, in the main, the extensions of vocabulary will take place by way of adjustment and not of invention. For this reason, in an account of Word Economy, the problem of structure is as relevant as that of distribution. A vocabulary which is comprehensive without being flexible has bad economy because its maximum efficiency is fixed in the present. Its rigidity will stand in the way of any adaptation to meet changed mental requirements, and tend to make the language increasingly deficient as a medium of expression. To have a good economy a vocabulary must lend itself readily to adjustment by combination and the use of affixes. The ideal vocabulary from this point of view is the jargon of commerce, which produces such euphonious hybrids as ' optimax ', ' aertex ', and ' cuticura ' ; and patent names like 'movol ', ' sanatogen ', ' thermogene '.
The most simple method of extending symbols is to string two or three single words together in compound formation. This habit, assisted no doubt, by the telegraphic style of newspaper headlines, seems to be growing among the Anglo-Saxon peoples. In the United 82 States, in particular, compounds are formed with an extraordinary facility. To the American a stud is a ' collar-button ' and his vest an ' undershirt '. He burns ' coal-oil ' in his stove instead of paraffin, has a chat with a ' newspaper-man ' when he meets a journalist, and takes the ' street-car ' to the ' moving picture theatre ' when an Englishman would go by tram to the cinema.
Whether these compounds are fused as in milkman ,hyphened as in walking-stick, or separated as in motor car is unimportant. The true criterion of a compound word is its habitual use for a particular object or contextual situation. When I look at the sky and assert that it is a ' good day for cricket ', a certain element of creation or composition enters into the juxtaposition of 'good ' and 'day '. But when I say ' Good day ' to the vicar, as I make my way to the cricket ground, the words are being used as an inseparable formula, like ' how do you do? ' or ' farewell '. They are functioning, that is to say, as a unit.
Compound words may be regarded as an ideographic modification of a phonographic system. They introduce economy of symbolization without leading to the error of over complication into which the philosophic systems fall. Freedom in this respect has, therefore, an important bearing on the reduction of a vocabulary, and the fact that it is so marked a characteristic of English adds considerably to the possibilities of producing a simplified form of the language. The process is still further assisted by the modern tendency towards replacing the fusions derived from one classical language by compounds made up of English words. Thus we have a 'get away' for an 'escape', 'upbringing' for ' education ', ' outcome ' for ' product '. These tendencies figure prominently in Basic English substitution.
The second method of symbolic extension is word-coinage or the making of neologisms. This may be effected either by blending two or more words together, or by a formal modification with affixes.
It may, perhaps, be argued against Basic English that the absence of verbs checks the most natural process of word-building, that of making alternate verb and noun forms, whether starting with a noun as in ' class ', ' classify ', ' classification', or with a verb, as in ' differ', ' difference ', ' differentiate ', ' differentiation '.
Such a criticism is scarcely relevant to Basic English in its minimum form, as the limits of vocabulary are definitely fixed. _ It might take advantage of uniform affixes, if these were introduced into Standard English usage, but the formation of fresh words would destroy all the advantages of working with a limited vocabulary.
But there may be a demand in the future for a form of English in which grammatical simplicity is combined with an unrestricted vocabulary. And it is certainly true that Standard English is slowly developing verbless alternatives. It would be a serious argument against encouraging this tendency in the language if it seemed likely that it would check the effortless coining of fresh words when the need for them is felt.
There is, however, no reason to suppose that changes in the forms of words can only be made satisfactorily by building up alternate forms. It so happens that the suffixes employed in English in the formation of abstract nouns have a verbal character. But there would be no difficulty in applying fresh suffixes which would indicate action without necessitating the preliminary stage of the verb form; nor, indeed, in taking over the suffixes '-ment ' and '-tion ' and using them in this way. Moreover, the auxiliaries themselves may be, and are, formed into verbal suffixes, as ' faction ' for ' make '. These might be extended, ' ession ', for example, being used for the verb ' to be '. and ' devention ' for ' become '. The indication of the appropriate auxiliaries would also serve to remove possible ambiguity.
This problem of formation through verbs does not, of course, arise in the case of words which have been already so formed. Their verbal derivation is a matter of historical interest only, and need in no way concern those who are learning English as an international and verbless language. It is interesting, however, for its bearing on future possibilities, to see what might be done in the formation of words similar to those already in the language, without passing through the intermediate verbal stage. I take the selection from a list given by Jespersen in his International Language where he is showing how Novial would convert its verbs by the use of suffixes.
86

Opinion	Ideation Opinion is an example of an abstract noun which has lost all verbal feeling. Jespersen, however, forms ' opinione ' from ' opine ' and 'ideation' seems to be an equivalent for this.
Discussion	Interlocution
Satisfaction	This is an auxiliary formation as it stands.
Formation	{ Enshapement { Shapement { Formifaction
Isolation	{ Solitution { Abalteration
Expedition	{ Advancement { Prolation This only gives expedition in the sense of ' forwarding'. The other use of the word is covered by 'journey'.
Evolution	Unrolment [Roll is from French' role ', derived from ' rotula '].
Fabrication	Manufacture

87
It must be admitted that the verb form, largely on account of the additional syllable which it usually supplies, gives more euphonious words. This is a problem, however, which would present little difficulty to experts ; and where there is no ground for supposing an intention to create verb forms, it would be permissable to insert syllables where necessary for euphony.
It is continually asserted by supporters of the synthetic language movement that one of the great objections to the simplification of a national language lies in the impossibility of framing properly differentiated derivatives.
But the unbridled use of affixes seems to add little either to the effectiveness of a language or to the ease with which it may be acquired.
Here again, we may turn to Jespersen as representing the advanced researches of the synthetic group. So far from removing, his system of differentiated suffixes seems to create, ambiguities. In the first place his account of what the '—ione' ending stands for is inexcusably vague. " They do not like those in —o denote simply the action of the verb ", he says, speaking of the words so formed, but partly ` the result (as a whole) or the resulting state, partly the way or manner in which something is done ". It is difficult to see why he did not confine the meaning to " the result or resulting state ", since the rest is covered by the gerund. Distinct from the suffix signifying the action and that signifying the result of the action, Jespersen introduces yet another ending ' -um ', which is to be employed " when the product of the action is specially meant, as distinct from the way in which it is done ". Thus we have ' fabrikatum ' =a manufactured article, ' kreatum ' =a thing created, 'kopiatum ' =a thing copied (distinct, we are told, from ' kopie ', the copy). Finally, there is a suffix '-uro ', " to denote the result or product as distinct from the act itself ". The distinction between the '—ion ', '-um' and '—uro ' substantives in the light of Jespersen's examples is, to say the least of it, puzzling. It is clear that ' evolutione ', ' opinione ', 'lektione ', all belong to the first group. But how does 'inventione ' differ from ' kreatum ', for example, which seems quite arbitrarily to have been placed in the second ? Why is ' texura '=a thing woven, in the third group, if ' fabrikatum ' is in the second ? Again, why, if ' fotografure =photo, carefully distinguished from ' fotografatum '=the thing photographed (a second group word), is in the third group, should ' printatum ' =printed matter, i.e., the actual product of printing, and therefore the equivalent of the 'fotografure' which is the actual product of photography, be placed in a different group ? The shades of meaning which justify the separate existence of these three groups, are, if they exist at all, so fine that only an expert of Jespersen's standing could detect them. They are useless as a working system of word-formation for the man in the street. It is true that something might be done in an artificial language on the lines indicated by Jespersen, which would be more satisfactory than anything he has yet produced. A possible suggestion is to differentiate as follows : 90

If Jespersen or anyone else produced a satisfactory system of suffixes it would certainly have to be admitted that here was one of the advantages that an artificial language had over a simplified national language, by way of compensation for its many drawbacks. Jespersen himself admits, however, that usage stands in the way of a completely regularized system, even in Novial, and it is only usage which makes the adoption of such a system impracticable in Basic English. It is hard, therefore, to see how the Word Economy of Basic English, in respect of flexibility, need be inferior to that of its rivals in the international field.
After studying the use of the affix in Esperanto, one is tempted to conclude that this feature, claimed as so great an asset in the language, effects no real economy, save, perhaps, of space and 91 breath. For the affixes exist side by side with alternative circumlocutions furnished by the desire to provide an equivalent for any word that has currency in a national language. Thus, though ek and mal, as prefixes, denote ' commencement ' and ' opposite ' respectively, the vocabulary also contains the words komeni and kontraua, while the suffixes ar, ej, and id only ( duplicate the sense of kolekt (collection), loko (place), and juna (young). It may further be argued that a number of mono-syllabic affixes are more difficult to memorize and differentiate than a similar number of separate words. The learning of words is facilitated not by brevity but by distinctive sound and shape.
The third method of word-formation is by way of metaphorical extension. This process is effected by taking a current symbol and changing its referent, either by an analogical use of the word, as in " blade of grass ', or by extension to a connected object or situation, as, for example, when we talk of a dress as a ' Poiret creation '. Symbols adapted in this way to fresh uses are not commonly classed as new words, but functionally they should be so regarded.
But for the systematic use of metaphor, the Basic Vocabulary could never have been successfully reduced to its present dimensions. It is to be hoped that international ingenuity will develop still further the possibilities of metaphorical usage. The second form of metaphor, ` that of extension to a connected object, may be thought to constitute a bad economy because it introduces a type of pun. But with double meanings so related, context exercises a sort of natural selection which the word economist has a right to exploit.
The conservatism that retards the simplification of language, also acts as a brake on linguistic developments of a more exotic kind. Neologistic invention is fertile in the production of slang but it is seldom that the literary fraternity dares to invoke its aid. Yet if emotive utterance is to be completely successful in its exploitation of the psychological situation, there must be complete licence to create and refashion Words. There must, in fact, be brought into being a symbolic machinery capable of infinite adaptation. Mr. James Joyce is the modern pioneer in this field, and his verbal experiments in Work in Progress deserve attention from <1--93--> linguists and students of neology. Mr. Ogden, in an analysis of the word-building technique involved, has enumerated ten main ways in which new patterns may be woven from the symbolic material there displayed.¹ Next to Mr. Joyce, American slang is perhaps the most fruitful source of linguistic innovation.
The rigidity of the Basic vocabulary and the complete flexibility of Mr. Joyce's, each play their part in subordinating the linguistic mechanism to human needs. In a comprehensive scheme of Word Economy, recognition would be given to both these divergent developments, for they represent not conflict but the complementary points of view necessary to an adequate control of our symbolic resources.

Psyche,

To Part One

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Last updated November 2, 2012.

WORD ECONOMY : A Study in Applied Linguistics
by L. W. Lockhart
Renown translator and textbook writer of Basic English
Future Director of the Orthological Institute

LONDON :
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., Ltd. 1931
Psyche Miniatures, General Series No. 38

PART III . VERBAL ECONOMY

The Analytical Principle

The Philosophic Language

The Modern Approach

An International Language

Classification Tree for Basic English

PART IV . WORD FORMATION

WORD ECONOMY : A Study in Applied Linguistics by L. W. Lockhart Renown translator and textbook writer of Basic English Future Director of the Orthological Institute

LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., Ltd. 1931 Psyche Miniatures, General Series No. 38

PART III . VERBAL ECONOMY

The Analytical Principle

The Philosophic Language

The Modern Approach

An International Language

Classification Tree for Basic English

PART IV . WORD FORMATION

WORD ECONOMY : A Study in Applied Linguistics
by L. W. Lockhart
Renown translator and textbook writer of Basic English
Future Director of the Orthological Institute

LONDON :
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., Ltd. 1931
Psyche Miniatures, General Series No. 38