Basic Roots & Inflection vs. Words

lots of URLs on Charles' page:

www.catty.com/~catty/lang

i think like Brad says, any set of basic vocab depends on the syntax,
derivation, aspects, etc. you use with it.
what looks basic in english is derived in another and vice versa.

in japanese you could say "patient" as "temper is long"
"lenient" as "looking with big eyes", etc.
then "patience" is "fact-of temper is long" and "impatient"
is "temper is short", etc.

you could derive "to pilot" from the noun of agent "pilot", of action
"piloting" or instrument "to steer", etc.

when i was working as a translator i was really upset that there wasn't
a consistent derivation system in one lang but at the same time the
-actorizationalismentificity suffixing derivation system of the other one
blurs the meaning of the words.
i thought that a good way to make it up would be to make the derivating
affixes with words like in sino-japanese but more systematically.
for instance "doctrinal_principle (government) king" instead of
"royalism". i added them to a list made of Ogden's list, RM's basic,
jôyô kanjis, and the concepts i found myself badly needing when translating.

so my own basic vocab is made of concepts used with two systems
of derivation: one is affixing (verbal voices, noun of agent and noun of
action/state) and the other one is compounding. for example i can
derive "maker" as either "agent making" or "make-er".
so there are noun roots like "public building", "container", "home"
"victim", "social event", "institution", "product", "vehicle", "member",
"clothes", "lid", "instrument", "partner", "artefact", "activity", etc.
these concepts need be easily expressed when translating any lang
so rather than deriving them from other roots with shaky affixes i
made them roots that i can use with abstract nouns to make precise words.


mathias