Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

Dictionary of language and linguistics 1268acoustic characteristics. The binary phonological oppositions of Halle and Jakobson arebased on the results of visible speech, which was developed originally as an aid for theinstruction of deaf persons.ReferencesBell, M. 1867. Visible speech: universal alphabetics of self interpreting physiological letters forwriting of all languages in one alphabet. London.Jakobson, R. and M.Halle. 1956. Fundamentals of language. The Hague. (2nd rev. edn 1975.)visual agnosia agnosiavocabulary (also lexicon)1 Total set of all the words in a language at a particular point in time. Quantitative dataabout the range of the vocabulary (e.g. over 1 million words for English) are problematicand depend on the particular estimate of the number of words (as ‘word’ is construed ineach case) and whether vocabulary from sublanguages is counted as well. The averagespeaker has a vocabulary of approx. 6,000–10,000 words and exhibits great differencesbetween his/her active and passive vocabularies. The vocabulary of a language can becategorized according to various criteria: (a) based on the semantic relations existingbetween words or groups of words, like synonymy, antonymy, etc.; (b) based on theformation of words (morphology); (c) based on the historical aspects of loan words,foreign words, or word families; (d) based on regional or social classes ( dialects,jargons, sublanguages); (e) based on the statistical frequency and usage ( frequencydictionary); and (g) based on pedagogic considerations ( basic vocabulary) for agraded vocabulary.ReferencesAitchison, J. 1987. Words in the mind: an introduction to the mentallexicon. Oxford.Carter, R. 1987. Vocabulary: applied linguistic perspectives. London.Jackson, H. 1988. Words and their meaning. London and New York.2 alphabet 2