Cover not available
Part of
Multilingual Cognition and Language Use: Processing and typological perspectives
Edited by Luna Filipović and Martin Pütz
[Human Cognitive Processing 44] 2014
► pp. 45–72

Frequency of use and basic vocabulary

| University of Waikato
| University of Reading
We use corpora from 18 languages to study the frequency of basic words such as mother, sun, and red. We compare three lists, Swadesh-200, Swadesh-100, and the Leipzig-Jakarta list (Tadmor 2009), and find that they have a high average inter-correlation. Using the WOLD semantic categories and fields (Haspelmath and Tadmor 2009), we find regularities in the word meaning types that are most likely to deviate from the overall correlations, i.e. words whose frequency-of-use varies significantly, such as those encoded by function words and basic actions (do/make), spatial relations (left, right), cognition words (to know, when), or possession (to take). Our results indicate a core collection of basic meanings universally used with similar regularity, despite other linguistic pressures impinging on these frequencies.
Keywords: corpus linguistics, universally used meanings, WOLD semantic categories
Published online: 10 June 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.44.02cal
References (44)
Altenberg, Bengt. 1998. On the phraseology of spoken English: The evidence of recurrent word combinations. In A. P. Cowie, ed., Phraseology: Theory, Analysis and Applications , 101–122. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Bell, Allan. 1984. Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13: 145–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boroditsky, Lera. 2003. Linguistic Relativity. In L. Nadel, ed., Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science , 917–921. London: MacMillan Press.Google Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa. 1996. The origins of children’s spatial semantic categories: Cognitive versus linguistics determinants. In J. Gumperz & S. Levinson, eds., Rethinking Linguistic Relativity , 145–176. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope & Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 2009. Language as mind tools: Learning how to think through speaking. In J. Guo, E. V. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & S. Ozcaliskan, eds., Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Psychology of Language: Research in the Traditions of Dan Slobin , 451–464. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2007. Frequency of Use and the Organisation of Language . Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan & Paul Hopper, eds. 2001. Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure . Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan & Sandra Thompson. 2000. Three frequency effects in syntax. Berkeley Linguistics Society 23: 65–85.Google Scholar
Calude, Andreea & Mark Pagel. 2011. How do we use language? Shared patterns in frequency of word-use across seventeen World languages. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366: 1101–1107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Lyle. 1999. Historical Linguistics: An Introduction . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert. 1996. Using Language . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach . London: Longman.Google Scholar
Croft, William & Alan Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Nick. 2002. Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 24: 143–188.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Embleton, Shiela. 1986. Statistics in Historical Linguistics . Bochum: Brockmeyer.Google Scholar
. 1995. Review of ‘An Indo-European classification: A lexicostatistical experiment’ byI. Dyen, J%. B. Kruskal, & P. Black. TAPS Monograph82-5, Philadelphia. Diachronica 12: 263–68. DOI logo
Giles, Howard & Nick Coupland. 1991. Language: Contexts and Consequences . Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Goddard, C. & A. Wierzbicka, eds. 2002. Meaning and Universal Grammar: Theory and Empirical Findings (2 volumes). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John & Stephen Levinson, eds. 1996. Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. [Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language 17] . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin & Uri Tadmor, eds. 2009a. World Loanword Database . Munich: Max Planck Digital Library.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009b. The Loanword Typology project and the World Loanword Database. In M. Haspelmath & U. Tadmor, eds., Loanwords in the World’s Languages: A Comparative Handbook , 1–34. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar

Hopper, Paul & Elizabeth Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kemmer, Suzanne & Michael Israel. 1994. Variation and the usage-based model. In K. Beals,
 R. Denton, R. Knippen, L. Melnar, H. Suzuki, & E. Zeinfeld, eds., Papers from the Thirtieth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society: Vol. 2. Para-session on Variation and Linguistic Theory , 165–179. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns . Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume II: Social Factors . Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume 1: Theoretical Prerequisites . Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1995[1982]. Thoughts on Grammaticalization . Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Lewis, Paul, ed. 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World . Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.Google Scholar
Norde, M, K. Beijering, & A. Lenz. 2012. Current trends in grammaticalization research. Language Sciences . DOI logo.Google Scholar
Nurse, Derek & Thomas Spear. 1985. The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society 800–1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Pagel, Mark. 2008. The rise of the machine. Nature 452: 699. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. Human language as a culturally transmitted replicator. Nature Reviews ­Genetics 10: 405–415.Google Scholar
Pagel, Mark, Quentin Atkinson, & Andrew Meade. 2007. Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history. Nature 449: 717–720. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pawley, Andrew & Frances Syder. 1983. Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Native like selection and native like fluency. In J. S. Richards & R. W. Schmidt, eds., Language and Communication , 191–225. London: Longman.Google Scholar
R Development Core Team. 2004. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. On-line at [URL].
Tadmor, Uri, Martin Haspelmath, & Bradley Taylor. 2010. Borrowability and the notion of basic vocabulary. Diachronica 27: 226–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomason, Sandra & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics . Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth. 1988. Pragmatic strengthening and grammaticalization. In S. Axmaker, 
A. Jaisser, & H. Singmaster, eds., Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the ­Berkeley Linguistic Society , 406–416. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Bernard. 1969. The subjective estimate of relative word frequency. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 8: 248–251. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swadesh, Morris. 1955. Towards greater accuracy in lexicostatistic dating. International Journal of American Linguistics 21: 121–137. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wray, Alison & George Grace. 2007. The consequences of talking to strangers: Evolutionary corollaries of socio-cultural influences on linguistic form. Lingua 117: 543–578. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zipf, George. 1935. The Psycho-biology of Language . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tadmor Uri. 2009. Loanwords in the world’s languages: Findings and results. In M. Haspelmath & U. Tadmor, eds., Loanwords in the World’s Languages: A Comparative Handbook , 55–75. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

De Deyne, Simon, Marc Brysbaert & Irina Elgort
2023. Chapter 7. Cross-language influences in L2 semantic and conceptual representation and processing. In Cross-language Influences in Bilingual Processing and Second Language Acquisition [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition, 16], ► pp. 152 ff. DOI logo
Bhattacharya, Tanmoy, Nancy Retzlaff, Damián E Blasi, William Croft, Michael Cysouw, Daniel Hruschka, Ian Maddieson, Lydia Müller, Eric Smith, Peter F Stadler, George Starostin & Hyejin Youn
2018. Studying language evolution in the age of big data. Journal of Language Evolution 3:2 ► pp. 94 ff. DOI logo
Tamburelli, Marco & Lissander Brasca
2018. Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 33:2 ► pp. 442 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.