英语词汇学-1.pptVIP

Ⅲ Word and Vocabulary How large is the English vocabulary?/How many words are there in English? Vocabulary of Oxford English Dictionary published 1928 is 414,829. Reports of the size of the English vocabulary in the popular press have a very wide range: from 400,000 to 600,000 words (1983); 200,000 words in common use. The discrepancy( is due largely to different definitions of a word, and so a study attempted to produce a more reliable estimate by using word families instead of words as the unit of counting. Ⅲ Word and Vocabulary Goulden, Nation and Read (1990) counted the number of word families in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Of course, dictionaries can’t contain every current word, but it still the best resource available for counting words. Goulden et al. found that the dictionary contained about 54,000 word families. This is a huge number of items (remember that each word family contains several words). Ⅲ Word and Vocabulary The vocabulary of native speakers A research made in 1984 shows that the vocabulary for a undergraduate is about 20,000, for a high school student is about 17,000, for a junior middle school student is about 13,000，for a ten-year-old child, his vocabulary is about 7000. This suggests that first language learners add between 1000 and 2000 words per year. Your vocabulary is equal to that of a 9-year-old child. Some Interesting Facts There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger, Neither apple nor pine in pineapple． And while no one knows what is a hotdog, you can be pretty sure it isn‘t canine（犬类）． English muffins(=hot muffins热松饼，美式早餐/英式午茶糕点) were not invented in England，Nor French-fries in France，(炸薯条); 再如： French window 落地窗， take French leave不辞而别，擅自离开工作岗位 French grey浅灰色 Sweetmeats(糖果)； sweetbread (甜面包）？ In English we find that quicksand can work slowly, Boxing rings(拳击赛台)are square． And why is that writers write, but fingers dont fing，grocers dont groce, and hammers dont ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why