The most frequent used English words on the base of dictionaries and different types of texts



Adictionaryis a collection ofwordsin one or more specificlanguages, often listedalphabetically(or byradical and strokefor ideographiclanguages), with usage of information,definitions,etymologies,phonetics,pronunciations, translation and other information or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as alexicon.It is a lexicographicalproduct designed for utility and function, curated with selected data, presented in a way that shows inter-relationships among the data.

Thefirst recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times but lexicography appeared in 20^th century. The worddictionarywas invented by an Englishman calledJohn of Garlandin 1220. Samuel Johnson'sA Dictionary of the English Language remained the English-language standard for over 150 years, even though it was not the first English dictionary.

TheOxford English Dictionary remains the most comprehensive and trusted English language dictionary to this days..

Some interesting facts about English language:

1. A lot of people think that English is the most popular language in the world. And so: we will dispel this myth! The most widespread language, nevertheless, is Chinese. And the second for prevalence is Spanish. English gets honourable bronze and about 400 million carriers. But there are more than 700 million people who study or use it as the second language. And, by the way, you are already included in this number.
2. Many assume (residents of Russia — first of all) that Russian — the richest language in the world. Well, modern dictionaries of Russian show figure 130 000 of words while in modern dictionaries of English this figure comes nearer to one million (usually — 800 000).If to take the well-known dictionary of Dahl, there we are waited 200 000 words.
3. But in Russian the shortest sentence can consist of 2 letters (Yes-Да), and in English — at least of three (I am/I do).
4. The longest word in English - pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The name of an illness of airways at inhalation of volcanic dust and another fine dust is behind these 45 letters.
5. Also in English — most of all synonyms. That is if you can't remember any word in conversation, easily you will be able to replace it with another, similar on sense.
6. Punctuation marks in English appeared only in the XV century.
7. The most ancient word in English is the word town (the city, the town), and also words: bad, gold, apple.
8. In English there are many interesting words: for example, indivisibility where the letter “I” repeats 6 times. Or, for example, Goddessship (divinity) — is the only word where the consonant repeats 3 times in a row. Or here still: rhythm — the longest word from 1 vowel.
9. The sentence «The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog offer» is unique that here all letters of the English alphabet meet.
10. There are many other types of English — for example, the Australian English, the New Zealand English, the Canadian English, the South African English, the Indian English and the Caribbean English.

The classification of dictionaries is a very important aspect of lexicography «bearing a direct practical significance» to the preparation of dictionaries. The entire work of dictionary making from the planning stage to the preparation of press copy, at its different stages, viz. collection of materials, selection and setting of entries and arrangement of entries and their meanings is largely governed on the basis of which the dictionary is classified.

Dictionaries can be classified into different types on the basis of several criteria, varying from the nature of the lexical entry to the prospective user of the dictionary. Below are presented some main criteria for the classification of dictionaries.

1. Density of entries: whether the word list is general or restricted and special? Does it also cover regional and social dialects, jargons and slangs and archaisms?
2. The number of languages involved: monolingual, bilingual, multilingual etc.
3. The nature of entries: whether lexical only or also encyclopedic, the degree of concentration on strictly lexical data.
4. Axis of time: whether diachronic (dynamic) or synchronic (static).
5. Arrangement of entries: alphabetical or semantic or causal.
6. Purpose: whether normative or referential.
7. The prospective user: whether meant for the general reader to find out general linguistic information or for special users to know some special aspects of the lexical unit say etymology etc. Is it meant for the general language or only for the language of literature, there too, the language of some author, here again the language of some of his works.

All these criteria can be applied, sometimes alone and sometimes with others, for the classification of dictionaries.

Now it is time to acquaint you with some types of dictionaries.

The general dictionary covers the total language. The dictionary of any size may be a general dictionary. It contains words from all spheres of human activities and all areas of the life of the speakers of the language.

The general dictionaries are of two types:Academic or normative dictionary and referential or overall descriptive dictionary.

The academic dictionary gives the lexical stock of the standard language. The aim of this dictionary is to present the language as it is expected to be and stop it from decay. It has an eye on the future usage of the language. The selection of entries is done from the works of the creative writers, may be both earlier and contemporary, literature of science, arts etc., newspapers, magazines and other materials which are considered representative of the standard language. These dictionaries do not contain words of local or regional variation. Such words are included in the dictionaries only when they have been used by some writers and have been standardized in the language. Archaic and obsolete words used by creative writers are also included in them. The whole data in the dictionary represents a self contained and homogenous system. The chief feature of such dictionaries is their inclusion of profuse illustrative examples form the corpus with or without citations. Different types of dictionaries including dictionaries of technical terms, grammatical dictionary, the spelling dictionary etc., come under this group

A broad distinction is made between general andspecialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries do not contain information about words that are used in language for general purposes—words used by ordinary people in everyday situations. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are usually called terms instead of words, although there is no consensus whether lexicologyandterminologyare two different fields of study. In theory, general dictionaries are supposed to besemasiological, mapping word todefinition, while specialized dictionaries are supposed to beon omasiological, first identifyingconceptsand then establishing the terms used to designate them. In practice, the two approaches are used for both types.There are other types of dictionaries that don't fit neatly in the above distinction, for instancebilingual (translation) dictionaries, dictionaries ofsynonyms (thesauri), orrhymingdictionaries. The word dictionary (unqualified) is usually understood to refer to a monolingual general-purpose dictionary.

According to the Manual of Specialized Lexicographies a specialized dictionary (also referred to as a technical dictionary) is a lexicon that focuses upon a specific subject field. Following the description in The Bilingual LSP Dictionarylexicographers categorize specialized dictionaries into three types. A multi-field dictionary broadly covers several subject fields (e.g., a business dictionary), a single-field dictionary narrowly covers one particular subject field (e.g., law), and a sub-field dictionary covers a singular field (e.g., constitutional law).

Another variant is the glossary, an alphabetical list of defined terms in a specialised field, such as medicine (medical dictionary).

The simplest dictionary, a defining dictionary, provides a core glossary of the simplest meanings of the simplest concepts. From these, other concepts can be explained and defined, in particular for those who are first learning a language. In English, the commercial defining dictionaries typically include only one or two meanings of 2000 words. With these, the rest of English, and even the 4000 most common English idioms and metaphors, can be defined.

We wanted to investigate the frequency of usage of some English prepositions, articles and the verb to be.

We chose three different texts.The first one is a scientific text (Harry Potter: Films, Books etc), the second one is the part of the novel (O. Henry. ‘‘The Gift of the Magi’’), and the last one is an article (Sports in the USA).

After the number of researches and calculations we summed up our results.

Also, we took the data from the dictionary of the frequency and compared with ours (certainly, the investigated words are the same).

The results of texts’ analyses are the following:

The results of texts’ analyses

	Scientific text	Novel	Article	Total:
A	3	8	3	14
Is	5	3	12	20
And	14	12	10	36
The	29	18	19	66
Of	12	6	5	23
To	4	6	4	14

We can see the following results.

Then we took the data from the dictionary of the frequency and made the table according to the relevant words.

It turned out that all our words are in the TOP10 from 300 words.However, some of them occupied the other places in the ranking of the list.

Investigated words	The data about the frequency of usage of these words in the different types of text given in the dictionary
The	1.644.245
And	724.851
A	714.981
To	695.321
Is	580.214
Of	542.501

Now we can analyze the information obtained from our research and material from special dictionary investigation and compare.

The words	Position in our investigation	Position in dictionary investigation
The	1	1
And	2	2
Of	3	6
Is	4	5
A	5	3
To	6	4

Dictionaries play an important role in the spiritual culture they reflect the knowledge owned by the given society in the given epoch. Dictionaries perform social functions such as informative (allow the shortest way to join the accumulated knowledge, through designation), communicative (giving readers the necessary words of native or foreign language) and regulatory (fixing the value and use of words, contribute to the improvement and unification of language as a means of communication).

References:

1. А.Васильев Английский: правила произношения и чтения, грамматика, разговорный язык/A. Васильев 2004.-134 c.
2. M.Rundell Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners/ M.Rundell.-Palgrave Macmillan,2008.- 1854 c.
3. М. В. Моисеев ЛЕКСИКОГРАФИЯ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА/ М. В. Моисеев.-Омск,2006–91 с.
4. Л. МинаеваЛексикология и лексикография английского языка/ Л. Минаева.-М.:АСТ, Астрель,2007.-324 c.
5. И.Иванова История английского языка/ И.Иванова (и др.).- Азбука,2010.-560 с.