[Corpora-List] Word frequency question

[rc2252 at columbia.edu]

Hi,

I work for Dr. Jennifer Manly at the Sergievsky Center at Columbia
University. I am writing to get some expert guidance. We are doing
a study where we are trying to match two word list tests (to test
for literacy), one that is in Spanish, Word Association Test (WAT),
and one that is in English, Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT), so
we can compare results on these tests when testing Spanish and
English speaking populations. We are hoping to match the words by
comparing their frequencies.

At this moment we have found two books one in English, "Word
Frequency" by John B. Carroll (1971) and one in Spanish,
"Diccionario de frecuencias de las unidades lingèuâisticas del
castellano" by Josâe Ramâon Alameda y Fernando Cuetos (1995). Any
thoughts on these books as sources to search word frequencies for
both English and Spanish words (only concerned with the word form
not the meaning)? Is it better to use books with the same
publication date? Also, does anyone have recommendations of other
sites or books we could use to get word frequencies?

A second issue we have is that even if when we find the word
frequencies ratings for words on the WRAT and WAT, we are not sure
the words would be comparable since their frequencies are being
derived from different corpora. Does anyone have any ideas how we
would go about being able to use frequency to compare Spanish and
English words?

And Finally, we feel that an additional way to make these tests
comparable is to consider the phonemic complexity of each word on
both the WRAT and WAT. Any suggestions as how to identify a word's
phonemic complexity?

Thank you,

Raquel Cabo


-- 
Raquel Cabo
G.H. Sergievsky Center
Columbia University
Research Assistant to Dr. Jennifer Manly
rc2252 at columbia.edu