Filologija, No. 14, 1986.
Original scientific paper
Analyzing the core vocabulary of American English
Željko Bujas
Abstract
This paper sets out to analyze the frequency structure of the “core vocabulary” of American English. The material analyzed is the lematized version (1982) of the Brown Corpus. Its core vocabulary is defined as the first 100 words of the Rank List, covering 49.9% of any average text in contemporary written American English. The principal observation of this analysis was the steady decline of Rank List cumulative frequencies (and their implication for foreign language tuition and acquisition). A speculative link was also established between the most frequent nouns in American English (and Russian) and fundamental human concerns: Man in time and space. Finally, an almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon and Germanic character has been established for the core vocabulary analyzed, and defined as a significant property of American English.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
184030
URI
Publication date:
15.12.1986.
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