Re: Classification of Abstract Words

Leon Lin wrote:
>  I'm afraid that I'll come up with this elaborate system with a detailed
classification of everything and then they'll be a whole family of  words
that I completely missed and there is no way to derive it. Then  I'll have
to start all over.
>
>  How did you make sure that all concepts are derivable?
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I didn't.  Given that there are 3600 possible roots in Ithkuil, those 3600
are not derived.  I have about 2000 of those roots identified so far.  As
for identifying concepts that can be derived from other concepts, with
hundreds of morphological categories and over an thousand derivational
affixes, I find that most concepts can in fact be derived from others, but
it's a tedious process because I have to review all the derivational
morphology each time I need a new lexeme, to determine how/whether to derive
it from other, more semantically fundamental roots.  That's why it sometimes
takes me hours to translate a single sentence.

John Q.