batteries of affixes to multiply word-forms with the same recognizable root. Some of these affixes merely trail in the peculiar grammatical traditions of Aryan languages. Some have absolutely no semantic content at all (cf. E um for indefinite relationship). Others (e.g. E bo- for in-law as in mother-in-law) are merely shorthand for trivial types of relationship sufficiently expressed by other and necessary formal elements already part of the verbal stock-in-trade. The authors of E, I, I.N. and N tried to establish order where chaos existed (cf. -ship, -dom, -head, -hood, -ity in English) without probing into the intrinsic value of what they were salvaging. When we look at the result as a whole, their choice of derivative affixes reflects the same preoccupation which motivated the prevailing attitude to flexion.

The only satisfactory way of dealing with the problem of word-economy is Ogden's way; to start with words as experimental material and analyse what semantic elements enter into large classes. It may well, and in fact does, happen that these elements have little relation to the pattern of derivative affixes or of flexions in languages which have grown in the haphazard manner common to all existing natural ones. This very fact, as Ogden's work so richly illustrates, has a corollary which enthusiasts for auxiliary language proposals have been slow to recognize. If Ogden has achieved such outstanding success within the strait-jacket of acceptable English usage, what economies might be possible if someone undertook the task with complete freedom to prescribe an idiom best suited to maximate word-economy?

International Word-material

When all is said and done, learning a language involves memorizing a large number of new words. When we have reduced the number as far as we can without prejudice to the end in view, the beginner has to commit to memory what remains. Ease of doing so depends largely on familiarity with the material, i.e. on what associations we can make when first confronted with any single vocable. It is possible to reduce to negligible dimensions the load of new words with no helpful associations for the beginner, if we take stock of three facts:

(i) During the past two centuries, science has created a world-wide technical vocabulary;

(ii) As modern technology transforms everyday life, what was once the vocabulary of the laboratory becomes the vocabulary of the street-corner;

(iii) Scientific terms such as stratosphere, aeroplane, heterodyne, panchromatic, telephone, phonograph, gramophone, and