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Science Forum Index » Language Translation Forum » Statistics-based list of fundamental vocabulary + pattern?
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| Vincent Delporte |
 Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:02 am |
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Hi
In this day of computers and Internet, I figured there should
be a list of, say, the most basic 500 or 1,000 words required for
everyday life, along with some basic grammatical patterns, independent
from the actual language.
That is, no matter what the language, words like "eat, drink, work,
etc." and patterns like "where is..?", "how to...?", "I'd like
to...?".
Google and posting to a mailing list on linguistics didn't help, which
I find very odd: After all, how do people write language books? How do
they decide on what words and patterns to introduce at such and such
level, if not based on actual statistics?
Has anyone heard of such a list?
Thank you. |
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| Hanna Burdon |
| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:13 am |
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In news:d45cr2p8sfrj635og58b4lmbvon3u4vjks@4ax.com, Vincent Delporte
wrote:
Quote: Google and posting to a mailing list on linguistics didn't help, which
I find very odd: After all, how do people write language books? How do
they decide on what words and patterns to introduce at such and such
level, if not based on actual statistics?
Has anyone heard of such a list?
I don't know about grammar, but lists of most common words are googlable
in abundance.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=most+common+words
Hanna
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| Vincent Delporte |
| Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 2:20 am |
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On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:13:26 -0000, "Hanna Burdon"
<babelfishWYTNIJ@poczta.onet.pl> wrote:
Quote: I don't know about grammar, but lists of most common words are googlable
in abundance.
Yes, but I'm looking for a language-agnostic study  We often hear
about people only using so many words in every day life, so I figured
there must be a study somewhere that can be used as a basis to learn
new languages faster. Same for grammar.
Thanks. |
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| Hanna Burdon |
| Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 7:31 am |
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In news:0hudr25lajnqdpsk8m04ffad7qlhk0r7pr@4ax.com, Vincent Delporte
wrote:
Quote: I don't know about grammar, but lists of most common words are
googlable in abundance.
Yes, but I'm looking for a language-agnostic study
So you're looking for a list of words in no language? Now that's going to
be tricky. You might want to rethink your question along the lines of
"fundamental concepts" rather than "fundamental vocabulary". Only then it
ceases to be a linguistic question.
Hanna
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*** http://www.theseahills.co.uk ***
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| Vincent Delporte |
| Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:44 am |
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On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 11:31:00 -0000, "Hanna Burdon"
<babelfishWYTNIJ@poczta.onet.pl> wrote:
Quote: So you're looking for a list of words in no language? Now that's going to
be tricky. You might want to rethink your question along the lines of
"fundamental concepts" rather than "fundamental vocabulary". Only then it
ceases to be a linguistic question.
Right. Fundamental concepts, it is I know that part of the daily
words we use are culture-specific, but it's also obvious that there's
a lot of common words.
How do authors of language books get started? How do they choose what
words and patterns to introduce at what stage? |
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| Thomas Weber |
| Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 10:50 am |
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"Vincent Delporte" <justask@acme.com> wrote in message
news:1koer255eh0il2n3lqpsm4636a1usv0psa@4ax.com...
Quote: How do authors of language books get started? How do they choose what
words and patterns to introduce at what stage?
First of all, when you say "language books", do you mean phrase books for
travelers? Because that's the level of mastery you're talking about.
In that case, I'm sure the authors just review the vocabulary the learner is
likely to encounter ("Where is the train station"), and add unlikely but
important things like, "I need a doctor." I doubt statistics have anything
to do with it.
But if by language book you mean a traditional classroom textbook, there the
task (as I observe it) is in the early stages to make the new language
accessiible (so lots of cognates and simple sentences) and then to exemplify
the structure of the entire language (so examples of all the phonemes and
the noun genders or cases or plural formations or modifier agreement or verb
forms or word order). As I see it, in exemplifying the language, the point
is to give the student a foundation for linguistic mastery, not to reflect
some frequency of extra-linguistic concepts.
Thomas |
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| Vincent Delporte |
| Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 1:32 am |
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On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 08:50:41 -0600, "Thomas Weber"
<weber.thomas@comcast.net> wrote:
Quote: First of all, when you say "language books", do you mean phrase books for
travelers? Because that's the level of mastery you're talking about.
No, I was thinking of regular textbooks, at the
introductory/intermediate levels.
If they don't rely on statistics, then how do authors write language
textbooks? By copying existing textbooks? So... how was the first one
written? |
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| Einde O'Callaghan |
| Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 4:52 am |
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Vincent Delporte schrieb:
Quote: On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 08:50:41 -0600, "Thomas Weber"
weber.thomas@comcast.net> wrote:
First of all, when you say "language books", do you mean phrase books for
travelers? Because that's the level of mastery you're talking about.
No, I was thinking of regular textbooks, at the
introductory/intermediate levels.
If they don't rely on statistics, then how do authors write language
textbooks? By copying existing textbooks? So... how was the first one
written?
I know that several of the textbooks I've used to teach English here in
Germany were based on studies of the frequency of usage of vocabulary
and grammatical structures - not on a one-to-one relationship between
frequency and the first things taught, but a more complex
interrelationship between introducing grammar in a logical fashion and
teaching the learners meaningful and useful utterances.
The newest generation of textbooks (in all Europeqan languages at least)
being developed at the moment are being developed in the context of the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) issued by
the Council of Europe. You can read about it on the website of teh
council of Europe <http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/CADRE_EN.asp> or
in Wikmipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages>.
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan |
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| Vincent Delporte |
| Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 2:18 am |
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On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 09:52:13 +0100, Einde O'Callaghan
<einde.ocallaghan@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
Quote: I know that several of the textbooks I've used to teach English here in
Germany were based on studies of the frequency of usage of vocabulary
and grammatical structures - not on a one-to-one relationship between
frequency and the first things taught, but a more complex
interrelationship between introducing grammar in a logical fashion and
teaching the learners meaningful and useful utterances.
Ah, ah... Looks just like what I had in mind.
Quote: The newest generation of textbooks (in all Europeqan languages at least)
being developed at the moment are being developed in the context of the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) issued by
the Council of Europe. You can read about it on the website of teh
council of Europe <http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/CADRE_EN.asp> or
in Wikmipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages>.
Thanks a lot. |
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