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

[Joel S. Berson]

That was my point to Randy, expressed in an attemptedly-humorous and
anachronistic way with reference to the Anglo-Saxons, whose pungent
contributions to English long predated both the 1590s and literacy.

Joel

At 7/9/2008 01:15 PM, Dennis Baron wrote:
>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

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