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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear tsuwm: The quote from Quinion has the kind of information I was looking for: "David Crystal described a simple research project—using random pages from a dictionary—that suggests these figures are severe underestimates. He concludes that a better average for a college graduate might be 60,000 active words and 75,000 passive ones. But this method of assessing vocabulary counts dictionary headwords only; it would be possible to multiply it several-fold to include different senses, inflected forms, and compounds. Another assessment—of a million-word collection of American texts—identified about 38,000 headwords. Bearing in mind this was all general writing, this doesn’t sound so different from David Crystal’s estimates for graduate vocabularies."
Which seems to mean that my guesstimate was not too wild, that I might actually be able to use properly if not define exactly almost every tenth word in a dictionary. So I would not be immodest to believe my vocabulary is in the 50 K range. And I would not hesitate to suggest that yours is substantially greater than that, since you have been in the word business for past ten years.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
yes, Crystal used Pinker's method.
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