A million English words, or only 600,000? Either way, it's a language packed with more words than you'll ever need

[Dennis Baron]

If only literates could coin words, then how could language develop
before literacy? Oh wait, maybe it didn't.  Words are slippery things
to count; new words slipperier; words on their way out slipperiest?

D
____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage




On Jul 9, 2008, at 9:45 AM, LanDi Liu wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: A million English words, or only 600,000? Either
> way, it's a
>              language packed with more words than you'll ever need
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>> And one could point out how much more linguistic the 1590s were by
>> dividing the times per word by the number of English speakers in the
>> two periods.
>>
>> Joel
>
> Especially if one only counted literate speakers.  One might assume
> the unwashed masses weren't coining too many words.
>
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Jilin City, China
> My Manchu studies blog:
> http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org