frequency of person/number

[Kees Hengeveld]

Dear Fritz,

I can give you the facts for Dutch. The frequency dictionary, based on a
800,000 word corpus, shows remarkable differences in the distribution of
pronouns for the written and oral varieties of Dutch. The absolute facts are
like this for the 75 highest ranking words in both subparts of the corpus:

                written         oral
1               07042                   04163
2               00440                   00796
3               16146                   01610

In relative terms, the distribution is as follows:

1               2                       1
2               3                       3
3               1                       2

The predominance of intrinsically deictic pronouns in oral texts is not
surprising. If I split up the figures for speech act participants (1 and 2)
and non-speech act participants the result is as follows:

1/2             07482 (2)               04959 (1)
3               16146   (1)             01610 (2)

What is remarkable is the fact that the second peron pronouns come last in
both subparts of the corpus.

In the figures above I have excluded the impersonal use of the second person
pronoun. I have included adnominal (genitive) and other case forms. For
morphological reasons it is impossible to split up the figures for singular
and plural.

More generally, I think that frequency dictionaries can provide the
information you are looking for.

Best, Kees Hengeveld



-----Original Message-----
From: FUNKNET -- Discussion of issues in Functional Linguistics
[mailto:FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU]On Behalf Of Frederick Newmeyer
Sent: vrijdag 26 april 2002 21:58
To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU
Subject: frequency of person/number


I'm interested in knowing what the relative frequency is in conversation
(and possibly other genres) of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person forms (singular
and plural, pronominal or non-pronominal). Could somebody please tell me
where to look for an answer?

Thanks!

--fritz newmeyer