23 BULLETIN OP THE 



Mr. E. S. HoLDEN read a paper 



ON THE NUMBER OF WORDS USED IN SPEAKING AND WRITING. 



(^T Ills paper is published in Appendix VI. of this Bulletin.) 



Mr. Gilbert remarked on the propriety of counting only il- 

 depeudeut words, and excluding mere inflections ; and counting 

 in this way he had estimated his own vocabulary at from 10,000 

 to 14,000 such words. 



Mr. Parker referred to the Chinese language, stating that the 

 Bible in that language required only 3600 characters, and that 

 1000 characters sufficed for common use. 



Mr. HiLGARD stated that only 600 words were to be found in 

 Italian operas ; and remarked that Mr. Marsh probably ex- 

 cluded inflections, and estimated only words which educated 

 men would usually employ, not such as would be used on special 

 occasions. 



Mr. Powell spoke of the language of the Utes, as comprising 

 about 1600 roots and 8000 words. 



Mr. Eastman urged the importance of classifying words 

 according to the frequency with which they are used. 



Mr. Gill remarked that 30,000 did not seem to be too large 

 an estimate of the number of words used by an educated man ; 

 and gave an estimate of the number of technical terms which a 

 naturalist must have at ready command. A zoologist required 

 about 25,000. 



Mr. Knight followed on the number of words in a technical 

 work of his own on Mechanics; and Mr. Farquhar on the mult)' 

 plication of words resulting from grammatical variations. 



Mr. Welling remarked that the variations in such estunates 

 were wide, and st.cTgested that it was necessary to consider 

 separately what words would, could, or might be used, and that 

 the investigation should be based on what had been done, not on 

 what miffht be done. 



