I have wondered how the various estimates of people's vocabulary size were arrived at.
Naturally I wonder what a reasonable figure would be for my vocabulary, and wish I
knew how to determine it.
Perhaps it would be a fun idea for our members to kick around, and express ways
of making a plausible evaluation of our vocabulary sizes.
It is obviously impossible to make a list of the words we know. I am sure that some
statistical approach ought be possible, but am so ignorant of statistics I know I am
incapable of designing a valid appoach. Perhaps if I make some suggestiongs it might
interest other members to comment and make alternative recommendations.
My idea is to take a dictionary that states the number of word it contains.
If I then take an equal sample of words from each letter, and note the number words
in the total really unknown to me, and compare its ratio to the total number of words
in the dictionary, I should get a crude estimate of my total vocabulary.
Obviously my sample would have to be limited by the amount of time and energy
I was willing to devote to the task. But if I took a short series of such estimates,
and averaged them, I should get closer to a reliable figure.
Let's hear some arguments about a workable method.